Renaissance Photoshop Assignment

By: Stirling Kim Moss

Renaissance Photoshop Assignment

Original Painting - The Jester With A Lute by: Frans Hals

Photoshopped Painting - Harry With A Lute by: Stirling Kim Moss 

    

    The Renaissance Period is ranked among the most influential periods of art in the history of Europe. It took place between the years 1300 and 1700. It is considered as the cultural connection from the middle ages to modern history. This span of 400 years was broken down into several different movements, one of which is the Baroque period which spanned the years 1600 to 1750. This was a time of development through all of the departments/groups of art. For example, aside from paintings, many musical styles were born in that era, like the Concerto and symphonia. Styles like sonata, cantata and oratorio flourished. Also, Opera was born out of the experimentation of the Florentine Camerata. The work of the Baroque period is extremely complex and even contradictory. However, the main difference between artworks produced in other periods than the Baroque is how it is able to effectively appeal to one’s senses in order to evoke different emotional states. Some of the qualities that are most often associated with the Baroque are greatness, sensuous richness, drama, energy/life, movement/motion, tension, and emotional excitement. The artists of this era worked hard in order to distinguish themselves from artwork produced in the other periods. They tended to use paints that were very strong and warm, particularly the primary colors of painting at the time, which were, red, blue and yellow, and were commonly also put within a close proximity of each other. Unlike the emotionless faces of paintings in other Renaissance groups, the faces in Baroque paintings clearly expressed their emotions. They often overlooked proper symmetry, and intentionally placed all action outside of the center of the paintings, and experimented with slanted axis in order to evoke a sense of instability and movement to the viewer. They enhanced this impression of movement by incorporating the forces of nature, like wind for example affecting what was painted within, like a flapping skirt in the wind. Overall, the main impressions were movement, emotion and drama throughout the Baroque art style. Another interesting development within this painting style was the application of the literary term allegory, where every painting told a story and held a message which was to be encrypted and understood by the viewer through symbols. Another important style that was developed throughout the Renaissance period as a whole, was called Chiaroscuro, which is the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition. Within every single Renaissance portrait painting, it is noticeable to the eye that there is always a single large main spotlight aimed toward the subject from different angles in each piece lighting up the artwork and creating an intense light and dark contrast. Overall, the Baroque period was defined by Heinrich Wölfflin as the age where the oval replaced the circle as the center of composition, centralization replaced balance, and coloristic and "painterly" (non-smooth finish) effects began to become more prominent.

    The artist who painted this piece, Frans Hals, was a Dutch Golden Age painter (paintings that were created during the Dutch Golden Age, approximately spanning the 1600’s during and after the later part of the Eighty Years' War for Dutch independence), who lived and worked in Haarlem, the capital of North Holland. Hals was born in 1582 or 1583 in Antwerp as the son of a cloth merchant Franchois Frans Hals van Mechelen and his second wife Adriaentje van Geertenryckand. Frans Hals later passed away on the 26th of August 1666 at the age of 83 or 84. His pictures were based upon society at the time, such as, banquets or meetings of officers, guildsmen, local councilman from mayors to clerks, itinerant players and singers, gentlemen, fishwives, and tavern heroes. However, his work consisted mostly of portraits, mainly of wealthy citizens such as Pieter van den Broecke (a Dutch cloth merchant) and Isaac Massa (a Dutch grain trader). In his later years of his career, his brush strokes became looser, in other words fine details became less important to him than the overall impression of the artwork. His earlier pieces gave off a sense of cheerfulness and liveliness, while his later portraits emphasized the stature and dignity of the people portrayed within. Hals was a master of a technique that utilized something previously seen as a flaw in painting, the visible brushstroke. The soft curling lines of Hals' brush are always clear upon the surface. His first biographer in the 1600’s, Schrevelius wrote: "An unusual manner of painting, all his own, surpassing almost everyone," on Hals' painting methods. From this statement one can conclude that this style of painting was not Hals' own idea, but rather the approach had already existed before him. It is believed that Hals was inspired by Flemish contemporaries in his painting method. The energy of Hals portraits struck people’s hearts as early as the 17th century. For example, a Haarlem resident Theodorus Schrevelius, another man from the Dutch Golden Age who was a writer and poet, noted that Hals' works reflected ‘such power and life' that the painter seems to challenge nature with his brush'. Centuries later, even the renowned painter Vincent van Gogh had mentioned his name in a written letter to his brother Theo: “What a joy it is to see a Frans Hals, how different it is from the paintings – so many of them – where everything is carefully smoothed out in the same manner.” Hals chose not to give a smooth layered finish to his paintings, as most of his contemporaries did, but mimicked the vitality of his subject by using smears, lines, spots, large patches of color and hardly any details in order to bring out a greater impression on the overall work. All in all, as a Baroque period artist, Frans Hals played a significant role in the evolution of 17th-century group portraiture.

    The painting, The Jester With A Lute, refers to a painting from 1623 or 1624 now in the Louvre Museum by the Haarlem painter Frans Hals, featuring a smiling actor wearing a joker's costume while playing a lute. The upper half of a young man's body is displayed and is set against a neutral colored background. Hals has drawn him in such a way that makes it seem as if the lutist is coming out from the picture. There is, therefore, an impression that the player is moving about, due to the fact that his head and shoulders are turned half right. The subject's identity is unknown. A wide, devilish smile lights up the lutist's face, bringing him to life. This kind of painting belongs to what are known as genre portraits, which refer to pictures that portray ordinary scenes of everyday life. As such, this lutist might be an allegory of the evening life of commoners in the pleasures of music and dance.