Sunday 19 October 2014

Pre-Raphaelite / Raphael / Renaissance notes


Founded in London in 1848, a secret society of young artists (and one writer) who were opposed to the Royal Academy’s promotion of the ideal as exemplified in the work of Raphael."

- Signed their work with PRB (Pre-Raphaeliite Brotherhood)
- Members; William Holman Hunt, Sir John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti
- They saw the work created before Raphael and thought it was purer and generally better.
*WEREN'T BEFORE RAPHAEL*

Raphael
- 1483 - 1520
- high renaissance painter
- more versatile than Michaelangelo

Renaissance ("Rebirth")
- 14th - 17th Century
- Italy in the late middle ages, then spread to rest of Europe
- Perspective technique developed during the Renaissance
- Techniques developed to make things look more realistic during this period
- Perspective rules: horizon lines, follow eyes, center points, religious people as focal points
- Compositional routes, staged to create structure, to guide your eye to one thing in the painting
- Camera Obscura
- David Hockney's secret knowledge (BBC Documentary)
- Golden triangle / golden spiral technique

Back to Pre-Raphaelites
- Emphasized lips and hair
- themes were intially religious, then subjects from literature & poetry, particular themes were love and death
- Charles Dickens was a big critic of theirs
- tended to paint more true to the model rather than the character they were meant to be painting
- Often painted the Virgin Mary with ginger hair (this caused trouble with religious people)
- Pre-Raphaelites changed composition rules, moved characters around, used ginger model, often classed as blasphemous

Elizabeth Siddal
 - Model for Pre-Raphaelites
- She was Ophelia
- Ginger (at the time still associated with witchcraft)

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