Saint Basil's Cathedral, Moscow

Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat (St. Basil's Cathedral)

St. Basil's at night

Virtually every country on earth has at least one iconic architectural masterpiece that is instantly recognizable as symbolizing that nation. Some nations, such as the United States. have several such structures, but probably the White House or the U.S. Capitol would top our list. Great Britain has Big Ben, France the Eiffel Tower, Italy the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Germany its Brandenburg Gate, Australian its Sydney Opera House, Egypt its Pyr-amids, Greece the Acropolis, etc. Russia's most iconic edi-fice would undoubtedly be St. Basil's Cathedral in Red Square. St. Petersburg has several lovely, beautiful palaces and the like. Moscow has the Kremlin, which is an ugly medieval fortress, and in any case, not just one, but several buildings. Even Muscovites don't much care for it. None of them come even close to matching St. Basil's, which is probably the strangest looking, and thus the most identifiable cathedral in the world.

St. Basil's Cathedral is, today, actually a museum, used to draw tourists, rather
than worshipers. Communist state atheism has seen to it that it's been
almost ninety years since a congregation worshipped within its walls.

St. Basil's seems designed to
accommodate nine congregations
at the same time.

It's hard to describe St. Basil's. In overall shape it's said to have been inspired by a bonfire--not hard to imagine. There's little new or different about it's distinctive, brightly-colored "onion" domes. Russian Orthodox churches have been instantly identifiable by this feature ever since they borrowed it from India's Hindus close to a thousand years ago. As cathedrals go, the layout, at first glance, seems a little weird, though in fact, it's little more than a traditional Greek cross with four square, secondary chapels to create an overall diamond-oriented square shape (right). In essence, it is unlike any other work of Russian architecture, while having nothing remotely similar in Byzantine architecture either. Strangely, it's a cathedral without a nave, its exterior far more asym-metrical than its floor layout would suggest. It's also a case in which the fussy details that might otherwise ruin the look of a great building, in this case, actually combine to enhance its characteristic beauty. As for the colorful (dare we say gaudy) paintjob, that's purely a Russian architectural penchant. They love their bright colors.

Trinity Church (St. Basil's) under construction, 1755-61.

Russian Tsar Ivan IV

The Russians can thank Tsar Ivan IV (right, better known as Ivan the terrible), a ruler they're not otherwise particular fond of, for their iconic national symbol. In the autumn of 1554 Ivan ordered construction of the wooden Church of Intercession "on the moat". A year later, he ordered construction of a new stone cathedral on the site of nearby Trinity Church that would commemorate his victorious military campaigns. Dedication of a church to a military victory was a major innovation for Moscow. Construction (above) began in 1755 and took six years. The church was notable too for its placement outside the Kremlin walls, making it a church for commoners and peasants, rather the nobility. The identity of the architect is unknown, though tradition has it that the church was built by two architects, Barma and Postnik, probably Barma and Postnik Yakovlev. Many researchers suggest that the two names refer to the same person, Postnik Yakovlev, or possibly Ivan Yakovlevich Barma. Legend also has it that Ivan blinded the architect so that he could not re-create the masterpiece elsewhere. Indication are that construction involved stonemasons from the Baltic area and Germany.

St. Basil's cutaway illustration depicting the cathedral/museum's major features.

Inside, the composite church is a labyrinth of narrow, vaulted corridors and slender, vertical cylinders of the various chapels. The largest, is the central one, the Church of the Intercession. Though it is some 150 feet in height, it has a floor area of less than 700 square feet. The foundations of the cathedral are of stone, yet most of the rest of St. Basil's is red brick, which may account for the colorful paintjob outside. Inside, there's little paint but lots of dark, varnished woodwork often heavily adorned with gold leaf (another great love of the Russians). Overall, the effect inside is nothing like the soaring, extravagant spaces of the European Gothic cathedrals built around the same time. The wealth of adornment and details, which the exterior scale of the church is able to mitigate; the interior, with its modest sized spaces, tends toward claustrophobic. Inside St. Basil's, the eyes grow tired. The effect is not spiritually inspiring but bewildering.

The emphasis is upon height and endless, iconographic decoration.
 

Vasily Gryaznov--St. Basil

Incidentally, the church's nickname comes from the highly venerated local, Saint, Vasily Gryaznov. "Basil" is the Anglicization of the Russian name "Vasily." In case you might still be wondering why we refer to the Cathedral as St. Basil's, it was named for Basil the Fool, sometimes called Basil the Blessed. The saint was also known as Basil, Fool for Christ. He was contemporary of Ivan the Terrible, who built the church and who much admired him. St. Basil is also buried within church.








St. Basil's, Moscow, 1933,  as seen by the
American artist, Gerald Harvey Jones.
 

 

Painting the Antarctic

Lemaire Channel, Antarctica (near Graham Land) at Sunset, Cliff Wassmann.

There are very few places on earth today that have not been visited by painters seeking new and unusual subjects for their landscapes. I suppose very few painters have ever set up their easels and painted (in oils, of course) on the bottom of the ocean. And, one might logically think the same would be true amid the frozen discomfort of the polar regions. If so, one might think wrong. Either from the decks of ships or from the icy surface itself, a surprising number have braved the elements for their art (or at least for the cash and notoriety doing so might bring). One might also think that simply being able to paint under such conditions to be a relatively modern development. Wrong again. Even the earliest expeditions to the Antarctic took with them (in lieu of photographers) an artist to draw and paint whatever the explorers encountered. And, like some the explorers, at least one artist even lost his life doing so.


Top: Dundee Antarctic Whaling Expedition, 1893, William Gordon Burn-Murdoch.
Bottom left: Antarctic Expedition: Escape from the Bergs, 1842, Richard Beechey.
Bottom right: Antarctic Expedition: Gale in the Pack, painted 1863, Richard Beechey.

Today, those artists who don't paint dans l'air congeal (in frozen air) obviously work from photos (their own or those of others). Nineteenth-century Antarctic artists such as Richard Brydges Beechey, often could do neither. His Antarctic Expedition: Escape from the Bergs (above, left), depicts the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror narrowly avoiding deadly icebergs. The scene, like that of his painting, Antarctic Expedition, Gale in the Pack, 1842 (above, right), of the same two ships, is obviously painted from what must have been a terrifying memory (perhaps augmented by a vivid imagination as well).

Edward Seago traveled around the world several times painting
Antarctica and other remote locations all his life.

Artists today not only have more choices as to their source materials, they travel in modern comfort in much sturdier ships, no longer risking their lives in an effort to paint penguins and icebergs. I'm not saying that painting Antarctica is no more dangerous than a snow scene observed from your dining room window. Far from it, though the adventurous might claim that getting there is half the fun. During the past twenty years several smaller cruise lines have started specializing in trips to the edge of the Antarctic continent, ferrying sightseers aboard inflatable Zodiac watercraft (below) from ship to "shore," though few are likely to be seen toting an easel and watercolors.

Antarctic Landscape, David Barringhaus

Notice the brushes have hollow handles allowing
her alcoholic painting medium to moisten
the brushes from the back.

That's not to say Antarctic artists forego watercolors in such a frigid envir-onment lest their painting medium turn to ice. Maria Coryell-Martin solved that problem by switching from water to vodka as seen in her painting and the spec-ial brushes (lower-left) used to create it. Many Antarctic painters, especially those fond of painting outdoors, choose to work in watercolor and on a relatively small scale to lessen the painting time and thus their exposure to the harsh elements. I notice the flask, which makes me wonder if the artist doesn't take a little nip from time to time to also keep herself from freezing.



Lucia de Leiris, as are nearly all Antarctic artists, is a wintertime painter,
when it's warm (or at least, not so cold). 

Lucia deLeiris (above) is a zoologist, but her interest in science often finds its way into her art. She has traveled widely, painting in the Russian Arctic, South and Central America, Greenland, and Europe. Moreover, she has made three trips to Antarctica under the auspices of the National Science Foundation Artist and Writer's program. There she lived in science stations and field camps painting, sketching and illustrating. She has illustrated several books, including: Natural History of the Antarctic Peninsula.

Return of the Sun in the Antarctic, George Marsden.
I promised myself when I began I'd not get hung up on the tuxedoed
avian natives of the land; but, Marsden keeps them to a minimum.

Antarctica 2, 2001, Gisela Fabian.
I don't think this was painted on location.
 

 

Renaissance Cities--Syracuse

Saint Paul, standing guard outside the Syracuse Cathedral.

For those visiting Italy, one of the greatest mistakes you can make is to ignore Sicily. All too many art appreciators, in being overwhelmed by the art and architecture of the Italy, tend to think of the island of Sicily just off the "toe" of the peninsula as little more than a badly deflated football about to be booted towards the rock of Gibraltar. The greatest thing about Sicily is that it's Italy in a nutshell, with several large and small cities quite comparable to those of Italy. There's Palermo, Taormina, Syracuse, Noto, Messina--just to name a few. Palermo is like the "Rome" of Sicily. Taormina is a quaint, touristy version of Sorrento. Messina is somewhat like Naples. Forget Messina, the Allies bombed the hell out of the place during the Second World War so it's not got much to appeal to the arty crowd. Noto is interesting for the fact that it was a Baroque era experiment in city planning. Unlike most Italian cities, it actually has a grid. Then there's Syracuse. It was originally built largely on an island with a magnificent harbor, though it looks and feels nothing like Venice. It has hills; and its a good deal dryer.
 

Copyright, Jim Lane

The Venice of Sicily?

Despite the differences in geography, Syracuse does have a lot in common with Venice; though, as I said before, in a more concentrated form. Whereas Venice has Baroque churches seemingly on every street canal corner, Syracuse has only a sampling. But what they have are on a par with any Venice might boast. Moreover, with a good pair of sneakers, you can easily walk from one to another in just a few minutes. Try doing that in Venice. Syracuse was a thriving seaport from its founding by the Greeks in 734 BC (long before Venice, by the way). However, unlike Venice, during the Renaissance and the 16th-century, it was little more than that, although the way its more powerful neighbors fought over it around that time, you'd have thought the city streets were paved with gold. The Renaissance came late to Syracuse and not because any Renaissance masters chose it as a vacation hot spot (which it is today).

 

Copyright, Jim Lane

Syracuse today--as Italian as Venice without the troublesome canals.

Copyright, Jim Lane

Syracuse missed out on the benefits of modern-
day city planning the 1696 earthquake allowed
its neighbors.

On January 11, 1696, around nine p.m. the eastern third of Sicily was struck by the most powerful earthquake in Italian history, an estimated 7.4 catastrophe which utterly destroyed some seventy Sicilian towns and cities (including Syracuse), killing an estimated sixty-thousand inhabitants in the area. What the quake didn't kill, a tsunami followed mopping up almost as many more. The quake was centered offshore, just up the coast from Syracuse, near Catania, where a tidal wave wiped out nearly two-thirds of the city's population. During the next century or more, the entire area was rebuilt. Some cities moved as much as ten or fifteen miles, which offered Italian architects the opportunity for some of the first attempts as modern-day city planning. Syracuse, of course, couldn't be moved. Moreover the contrast between it and the city of Nota (which was moved) is quite Nota-ble. Today, Syracuse (below) still struggles with the congestion inherent in their narrow streets (above, left) and "helter skelter" layout leftover from medieval times.

The present-day residents of Syracuse don't refer to the island portion of their city as the "old town" for nothing. It's pretty hard to move a seaport and start over from scratch. Mount Etna can be seen in the background.

More important than streets of radials and grids is the fact that the prevailing Baroque extravagances of the 17th and 18th-centuries served to unite each city's architecture into a single style which has come to be know as Sicilian Baroque. A prime example, the centerpiece of this style, located in Syracuse, is its cathedral (the Duomo, below). The cathedral façade, designed by Andrea Palma and begun in 1728, is based on the formula of a Roman triumphal arch, allowing the broken masses within a columned façade to create a theatrical effect. They had just finished cleaning the facade when I was there two years ago. Set in a broad, elongated piazza, whatever you may think of Baroque architecture, the warm, pinkish glow of the native limestone was quite striking.

Copyright, Jim Lane

The Syracuse Cathedral--Sicilian Baroque at its best.

First it was a Greek temple, then an
Arab mosque, and finally, about a thousand
years ago, it became a cathedral.

Inside is another matter. There has been a place of worship situated on this site since the Greeks celebrated their victory over the Carthaginians in the Battle of Himera during the fifth century BC. In fact, archaeologist around 1900 discovered remains of an altar and other temple artifacts on the site which dated back some three-hundred years before that. The temple built by the Greeks was to Athena (of course) and Doric in style, a sort of mini-Parthenon in appearance. The conversion from Greek temple to Christian cathedral occurring some-time around the 11th-century, was hardly what you'd call flawless. Though Palma later did his best to disguise the church's pagan past, columns from the original Temple of Athena still dominate the interior, giving it a dark, gloomy look crying out for a bit of stained glass here and there along the aisles.






















 

Jean-Francois de Troy

Diane Surprised by Actéon, 1734, Jean-Francois de Troy

Painters and other artists today don't realize how lucky they are when it comes to choosing a career. Until the advent of the modern era, if you were a boy, there was a very good chance that your life's work would be a foredrawn conclusion at the time of your birth. Boys were expected to learn their fathers' trade and carry on the family tradition of excellence or in the upper classes, continue to run a family business. If your father was a blacksmith (for instance), you'd have a "battle royal" if you wanted to become an artist (especially if you wanted to be an artist). However, by the same token, the reverse was true. A painter or sculptor was expected to train his sons in his art, who were expected to dutifully follow in their father's footsteps, perhaps becoming even greater than their father. Anything less involved open rebellion, tantamount to disrespect for the father and dishonor to the family name. It's hard for us today to imagine that kind of pressure and to fathom just how intense it could be. Nicholas de Troy trained his son, Francois to become a painter and engraver like himself and his brother, Jean de Troy. Likewise, Francois trained his son, Jean-Francois de Troy to become a portrait painter like himself. In each case the sons outshone their fathers.

 



Four self-portraits (not many for a portrait painter).

Adam and Eve, 1718,
Jean Francois de Troy

Jean-Francois de Troy was born in 1679. He spent his early years in Paris under the traditional tutelage of his father until he was around twenty, whereupon he left for Rome (and elsewhere in the country). There he spent the next seven years learning to paint like an Italian. There too, he also picked up a taste for high-flown allegorical works and painting mythology, which came to dominate his work once he returned to Paris in around 1706. Little is known of the younger de Troy for the next ten or fifteen years. It's likely he simply lived at home and worked in his father's atelier painting portraits of wealthy society ladies. (Ladies' portraits, especially French ladies, tend to outnumber those of men by about two to one.) De Troy's earliest notable works date from the 1720s. though his "extremely" nude Adam and Eve (right) is listed as from 1718. The artist is usually categorized as a Rococo painter, and in general, Rococo painters loved to paint nudes; but even for a Rococo artist, de Troy's sheer quantity of mostly female nudes is notable, as seen in his Diana Surprised by Acteon (top) from 1734. (I counted fourteen.)


The Ascension, 1721,
Jean-Francois de Troy

De Troy's Ascension (left) is from 1721, also one of the earliest works. I know it's not the artist's fault, but despite the serious, religious nature of the subject, I found the image vaguely amusing (Superman, anyone?). Speaking of amusing, check out the little sacrilege at the bottom. Although de Troy painted a religious works--Moses, a nativity, David with the Head of Goliath, Lot and his Daughters, Bathsheba, and of course, more than one depiction of Eve, you'll note that in each case the subject seems to have been chosen relative to how easily nude figures might be included in the composition. Of course, de Troy was far from alone in this regard, but his religious works, coupled with his multitude of mythological paintings, seem to bear out this theory. Quite apart from Adam and Even, far and away the most erotic encounter de Troy ever painted is his Venus and Adonis (below), dating from 1729.

Venus and Adonis, 1729, Jean Francois de Troy

Even by Rococo standards this piece is quite erotic. De Troy uses the much-abused tale of Venus and Adonis to depict two lovers frolicking in the woods, though the scene appears quiet natural and poetic. De Troy goes well beyond what most painters of his time might try to get away with. François Boucher himself, the Rococo king of the naked ladies, who made a career of painting sensual nude women, would not have attempted a scene quite like this. The frankness of their lust indicates that de Troy's turning away from religion in favor of the relative freedom of mythology was not enough to satisfy his visual lust for sexualized female flesh. With Venus and Adonis, the artist can be seen moving toward a more life-like scene that was not embraced by any art movement, in effect, paving the way for pornography in the modern age. That's not to say de Troy painted pornography. He merely portrayed a sort of timeless sexuality, thinly disguise as mythology, gracefully opening the door to a kind of visual poetic erotica. In this regard alone, de Troy can be considered a French master, not only ahead of his time, but vastly underrated.

The Declaration of Love, 1731, Jean François de Troy

In 1731, we find de Troy moving toward the typical, high-fashion scene with which Rococo painting is more commonly associated. His Declaration of Love (above) from that year, with its rich textiles and garments of lavish design, set against the architecture and indistinct, verdant background, illustrates his ability to humor the upper class. The body language, the distinctive use of hands, and facial expressions suggests a relationship governed by status and upward mobility rather than actual love. The attention to clothing and his figure's physical presence set against the elegant perspective of the stairs, indicates the compositional sensitivities of an extremely versatile artist, well trained in all the classical basics acquired from his time in Italy.

The Oyster Lunch, 1735, Jean-Francois de Troy

From 1735, we find many of the same traits seen in Declaration of Love carried over into a much more ambitious work of upper class social genre. The exquisite detail alone in the enlarged area (lower-right), which was pulled from the center of the much larger vertical composition of The Oyster Lunch (above), is a tour de force far beyond that which is usually seen in Rococo painting. Despite his lack of formal academic training, it marks de Troy, as being on a par with Boucher, Watteau, Fragonard, Chardin, Tiepolo, Bellini, and two or three other Rococo painters I could name. The Oyster Lunch (above), incidentally, is said to be the first painting in which sparkling champagne is depicted.

The Bulls of Mars, a 1789 tapestry from a cartoon by Jean François de Troy

At the height of his career, de Troy undertook commissions for Versailles and Fontainebleau. In the years between 1724 and 1737, the artist designed tapestries for the Gobelins Tapestry Works, each depicting seven subjects. The example above was part of the History of Jason series (1743–46). The meal of Esther and Ahasuerus, (below) is from the History of Esther series (1737–40). Beginning in 1738, de Troy was appointed Director of the French Academy in Rome. He spent the rest of his life there. Later he was also elected as an honorary member of the Roman Academy of St Luke. De Troy's wife died at a young age. Moreover, Jean-Francois de Troy was unable to propagate the family tree with future artist. Every one of his seven children died in childhood. Jean François de Troy died on January 26, 1752 in Rome. He was seventy-three.

The meal of Esther and Ahasuerus, 1737-40, Jean Francois de Troy

The Ascension,
Jean-Francois de Troy,
Galaxy S6 cell phone case

 

Clovis Trouille

Italian Nun Smoking a Cigarette, 1944, Clovis Trouille

There has seldom been a well-known or historically important artist who has not been an avid self-promoter. Even Leonardo put forth a self-promotional resume that was shamelessly fraught with hyperbole. This major "rule of thumb" has held true, almost without exception, for centuries. In more recent years the tact has been for artists to try to garner as much free publicity as possible via the news media, TV, and more recently, Internet social media. The competition for such recognition among artists is sharp and, at times, even vicious--not unlike politics. It's all about name recognition. During the past fifty years or so, one means of achieving this public relations coup is by producing controversial art. That is, art which offends, especially those who wouldn't be likely to buy art if their lives depended upon it. This ploy probably goes back a lot further than fifty years, but that's a nice round number, and in any case, that which offended more than half a century ago probably wouldn't so much today. However, one artist I recently came upon, it would seem, strove to be offensive simply for the sake of being offensive. I'm thinking about the French painter, Clovis Trouille.

 

Ceremonial Sapphic, Clovis Trouille

Monastic Dream, 1952, Clovis Trouille

Trouille has often been classed as a "Sunday painter." He's also been referred to as an "Angel of Bad Taste," and a purveyor of "horrotica" (my spellchecker just cried, "Are you kidding me?"). Around 1930, Salvador Dali and Louis Aragon took note of Trouille's work and declared him to be a Surrealist. The ultimate Surrealist, Andre Breton, concurred, making the label official. As for Trouille, he was rather ambivalent, accepting the designation to gain notoriety rather than embracing the movement. In exploring Trouille's life's work, there's lots about which to be offended. If you're Catholic, you'll be horrified, in seeing Trouille's Italian Nun Smoking a Cigarette (top) from 1944 (especially if you're Italian and even more so if you're a nun). Trouille was intensely anti-cleric, and especially misogynistic. His montage, Ceremonial Sapphic (above) also seems to justify the word newly manufactured word, "horrotica." As for the title, I had to look it up. Sapphic means lesbian. Trouille's Monastic Dream (right), from 1952,leaves little doubt as to his point of view.

The symbolic references may, at times, be ambiguous, but the overall theme is not.

Clovis Trouille, ca. 1960

Clovis Trouille was born in 1889. He grew up in the small town of La Fere in the Picardy region of northern France, which was unfortunate. It meant that he came of age just before the start of WW I in one of the most hotly contested areas in all Europe. Like it or not, Trouille was thrust into the midst of the war simply by virtue of his birthplace. To say his later work was "anti-war" would be an under-statement. The experience left him with a lifelong hatred for the military as seen in two of his paintings above, The Re-membrance (above, right) from 1930 and Takouba (above, left) from 1941. His anti-cleric and anti-war themes, stirred together with his misogynistic eroticism combined with a macabre fascination with death and particularly his own burial arrangements pretty much frame every painting he ever did.

Clovis Trouille died in 1975. It's doubtful his tomb or funeral bore
much resemblance to his surreal visions of the event.

In looking at Trouille's My Tomb (top-left) from 1947, as well as his two depictions of My Funeral (above-left and above-right) would suggest that Trouille was maybe something of a control freak, or at least, not at all superstitious. In fact, he was both. He worked as a mannequin decorator for a department store, even though, as a graduate of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Amiens, he clearly had the background and training(not to mention Surrealist friends) to become quite famous. Yet fame imposes restrictions. Famous artists usually go out of their way not to offend. For Trouille, that would have been an unbearable limitation. Trouille hated selling his paintings. On occasion, when he did, he would sometimes seek to buy them back so he could continue working on them. That was the control freakish element in his personality. Simply surveying the overall horrotic tableau of his work would confirm the latter trait in lacking superstition.

The Orgy, 1930, Clovis Trouille

The Lie-in or The Sleepwalker Mummy,
1942, Clovis Trouille

Trouille's The Orgy (above) from 1930, along with his The Remembrance. were likely two of the paintings which brought Trouille momentary attention from Dali, Breton, and the other Surrealists. The simple style and lurid coloring of Trouille's paintings echo the lithographic posters used in advertising at the time, giving his work an unmistakable look all its own. Even as Breton offered to display Trouille's works in his gallery, the ec-centric artist refused. However, Trouille's variously titled painting The Mummy (left) pays homage to Breton with a portrait illuminated with a shaft of light. In any case, it was not until 1962 that Trouille had his first solo exhibition. It was followed the next year with a solo show at the Raymond Cordier gallery in Paris. Admittance was forbidden to anyone under the age eighteen and over seventy. Included in that show would have been Trouille's most controversial painting, Dialogue of Carmel (below) from 1945, depicting two nuns adjusting their undergarments. Watching them, off to the lower left, is a skull bearing a halo-like crown of thorns which has slipped off to one side.

Dialogue in the Carmel, 1944, Clovis Trouille

 

My Top Ten Posts for 2015

Long before David Letterman made them a talk show staple, I was always a fan of Top Ten lists. In fact, I've created a few of them over the years including:

        Top Ten American Movies of All Time

        The Top Ten Greatest Paintings

        Top Ten Ways You Know Your Art School Is Not Among the Top Ten Art Schools.

Inasmuch as today starts yet another new year, I'm taking this opportunity to list the Top Ten Posts from 2015. I must admit, some of the results surprised me. The list is based upon the number of page views each post has amassed in 2015. I would have expected the list would be based largely upon art topics; but instead, it would seem that the biographical items have been the most popular. Surprisingly, all but one are relatively unknown artists from the past.

10.  FRANCISCO OLLER

El Velorio, ca 1893, Francisco Oller,

 9. ALPHONSE MUCHA

The Four Season, 1895, Alphonse Mucha

 8. JOE PHILLIPS

Legion of Super Heroes, Joe Phillips

 7. ROBERTO PARADA

Parada faces

6. MAXIMILIEN LUCE

The Good Samaritan, 1896, Maximilien Luce

 5. PATRICK NAGEL

Palm Springs Life, Patrick Nagel

 4. MUSCLE PAINTING

Battle of Cacina, Michelangelo

 3. BUCKINGHAM PALACE

Buckingham Palace from the gardens.

 2. SANTIAGO MARTINEZ DELGADO



Mural, 1933 Chicago World's Fair, Santiago Martinez Delgado

And the number ONE post for 2015 is:

 

1. PAINTING GREEK GODS

Gods of Olympus, 1534-35 Giulion Romano

There you have it, folks, click on the link above each image to check out the original post. I'm looking forward to another 365 366 posts next year. I hope you are too.

 

 

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!