Vanity. Oil on canvas. The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. Juriaen van Streeck vanity still life

Juriaen van Streeck vanity still life
For those who love to discover the hidden codes in paintings, any Dutch still life is a real find. In allegorical still life vanitas even the smoke from the pipe is not just smoke, but an ephemeral symbol of our hopes. Dutch still life – a corporeal admiration of the world. Even when the canvas depicts a luxury edibles and cups of wine, they are symbols of death and the transience of earthly life. Dutch Golden Age painter of still lifes Juriaen van Streeck (1632 – 1687) demonstrates such type of vanity of vanities, indicating the transience of life.
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Symbols of Lute Player by Caravaggio (29 September 1571 – 18 July 1610)

Symbols of Lute Player by Caravaggio
Caravaggio painted The Lute Player for Cardinal del Monte, an important patron during the earlier part of the painter’s career. The play of light and shade, with the use of a shaft of light to illumine the painting from the left, is characteristic of his mature work. (Hermitage, St. Petersburg)

First, commissioned by Cardinal Francesco del Monte painting “The Lute Player” (around 1595) was later bought another Del Monte – an art dealer and art lover Vincenzo Giustiniani. However, by the XIX century the family of Giustiniani became so poor that the collection kept for centuries went under the hammer in 1808. Even before the start of trading Russian emperor Alexander I personally asked the director of the Louvre Baron Dominique Vivant Denon to buy “Lute-Player” for the Hermitage of St. Petersburg. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, the most original and influential Italian painter of the 17th century. Noteworthy, his early works were usually small pictures of non-dramatic subjects, with half-length figures, a preponderance of still-life details (which Caravaggio painted superbly), and a frankly homo-erotic character.
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Air. Forgotten genius Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Forgotten genius Giuseppe Arcimboldo
In fact, almost all the works of Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527 – July 11, 1593) are permeated with the spirit of innovation and rebellion against the existing laws of art and life. Infinitely gifted, brilliant Arcimboldo spent all his entire short life doing all available at the time creative activities. Undoubtedly, he was a great artist, engineer, scientist and designer. Besides, Arcimboldo huge personality is comparable with the great Leonardo Da Vinci. After the death, Giuseppe Arcimboldo was forgotten for a long four centuries, but revived by the efforts of the surrealists in the early twentieth century. And he immediately stood by the great Leonardo da Vinci, not inferior to him neither in the breadth of erudition, nor the universality of talent of genius.
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Most Popular Color in Different Countries

Most Popular Color in Different Countries
Whatever the Most Popular Color in Different Countries is, one color is determined as the most favorite in all countries – BLUE. According to the international survey of service YouGov, which took place June 15, 2015, Blue is most popular in the 10 countries of the world, on four continents. Most amateurs of blue live in the United Kingdom (33%), less – in Indonesia (23%). In addition, each of the respondents puts the blue on 8-18 points more than any other color. Interestingly, the blue has become the winner even in countries such as China, where red, yellow and green are the colors of prosperity and good luck. In fact, in the Chinese language only recently have appeared different words for blue and green.
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Painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder ‘The Harvesters’. Oil on wood, 1565. New York City, Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Dutch have created Holland

The Dutch have created Holland
“God created the earth, the Dutch have created Holland” liked to say countrymen of the artist. Wheat fields on the hills burn with hot gold, illuminating the dark green valley and replacing the sun. So fabulous banquet halls covered with piles of treasure and the feasting did not need any other light source. Trees with neat round canopy lined up in neat rows along the roads. Sloping meadows covered with low, like moss, grass, suitable for games. Rectangular ponds explicitly created by human hands, and good wide roads, of course, took a lot of work. Ships glide on a flat surface of the Gulf. The sea – the great stormy element – now seems tame and is no more dangerous than a large mirror.
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A kind of illustrated encyclopaedia of children’s games of the time – “Children’s Games”, Painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Oil on wood, 1560 Vienna, Austria. Museum of Fine Arts

Children’s Games by Bruegel
Fantastic city appears before the audience in the picture. On the streets we do not see a single adult. Only children live in the world of game. Left without strict supervision of parents and educators, boys and girls are enthusiastically about their business. Children jump, ride on sticks, roll hoops, play leap-frog, run tops, blow bubbles, walk on stilts, play with toys, ride on each other, climb fences, Handstand, swim. Copying adults, they represent a joust, trade shop, and wedding. The artist tried to give the fullest possible understanding of all known to him children’s games.
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The Hunters in the Snow, 1565 oil-on-wood painting by Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder

After Pieter Bruegel the Elder paintings on the theme of winter in the Netherlands came into vogue. However, Hunters in the Snow by Bruegel – not just a genre scene on the background of the rural landscape. This is a portrait of the world. To the present day from the series “Months” (“Seasons”) by Pieter Brueghel survived five paintings. The series continues the popular theme in medieval art cycle of seasons. Initially, in a cycle of paintings by Brueghel, most likely, was six, and “Hunters in the Snow” correspond December and January, that is, the work was conceived as a fifth, penultimate: the year in the Netherlands then counted with Easter.
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