Karmina Santos

October 1, 2016

4BIO3

Art Appreciation
3 WorldRenowned Painters and their Masterpieces

Caravaggio (1573 1610)

Caravaggio was the most revolutionary artist of his time, for he abandoned the
rules that idealized both the human and religious experience. Caravaggio can be said
almost single-handedly to have created the Baroque style.
Caravaggio was born on September 28, 1573 in Caravaggio, Italy. His real name
is Michelangelo Merisi. He undertook a short apprenticeship in Milan before heading to
Rome to work as an assistant to painters. At age 24, he caught the attention of
Cardinal Francesco del Monte. The Cardinal commissioned Caravaggio to paint for the
Church of San Luigi dei Francesi. His paintings in the Church caused some controversy
as it was very realistic and had a dramatic nature. This criticism however, became the
main source of his popularity and increased his reputation. Caravaggio had problems
with the law too. He killed an opponent after a dispute in a game of tennis. He then
fled to Naples. It was in Naples that his painting style changed. His paintings reflected
his current situation as it was dark and had a very urgent nature.
Early in 1608 Caravaggio went to Malta and was received as a celebrated artist.
Fearful of pursuit, he continued to flee for two more years, but his paintings of this
time were among the greatest of his career. After receiving a pardon from the pope,
he was wrongfully arrested and imprisoned for two days. A boat that was to take him

to Rome left without him, taking his belongings. Misfortune, exhaustion, and illness
overtook him as he helplessly watched the boat depart. He collapsed on the beach
and died a few days later on July 18, 1610.
Caravaggios Masterpiece

The Beheading of St. John the Baptist

This painting depicts the execution of Saint John the Baptist with Salome
standing with a golden platter to receive the head of the victim. It is the only painting
to bear the signature of Caravaggio, which is placed in red blood being spilled from
the Baptists cut throat. The signature became apparent only when the painting was
restored in the 1950s. Since then it is popularly claimed that Caravaggio signed I,
Caravaggio, did this in confession of a crime he had committed. The Beheading of
Saint John the Baptist is not only considered Caravaggios greatest masterpiece but it
is also among the most important works in western art.

Claude Monet (1840 1926)

Claude Monet was a famous French painter whose work gave a name to the art
movement Impressionism, which was concerned with capturing light and natural
forms. Oscar Claude Monet was born on November 14, 1840, in Paris, France. Monet's
father, Adolphe, worked in his family's shipping business, while his mother, Louise,
took care of the family.
In the community, Monet became well-known for his caricatures and for
drawing many of the town's residents. After meeting Eugene Boudin, a local landscape
artist, Monet started to explore the natural world in his work. Boudin introduced him
to painting outdoors, or plein air painting, which would later become the cornerstone
of Monet's work. Monet won acceptance to the Salon of 1865, an annual juried art
show in Paris; the show chose two of his paintings, which were marine landscapes.
Though Monet's works received some critical praise, he still struggled financially.
Monet was in dire financial straits, and his father was unwilling to help them.
In 1868, he attempted suicide by trying to drown himself in the Seine River.
Fortunately, Monet and Camille soon caught a break: Louis-Joachim Guadibert became
a patron of Monet's work, which enabled the artist to continue his work and care for
his family. Monet and Camille married in June 1870, and following the outbreak of the
Franco-Prussian War, the couple fled with their son to London, England. There, Monet
met Paul Durand-Ruel, who became his first art dealer.

Monet sometimes got frustrated with his work. Monet would simply burn, cut or
kick the offending piece. In addition to these outbursts, he was known to suffer from
bouts of depression and self-doubt. Monet struggled with depression, poverty and
illness throughout his life. He died in 1926.
Monets Masterpiece

Water Lilies is a part of Monet's water landscape group that was most likely
conceived in 1909, but which he did not begin until after several personal traumas
that occurred in the early 1910s. He worked in secret on dozens of canvases creating
a panorama of water, lilies and sky in his studio within and inspired by his Giverny
garden. While he painted from the constructed nature around him, due to his failing
eyesight and the flower's strictly summer bloom, much was painted from his rich
memory. The brushstrokes and palettes utilized were varied from earlier works,
almost appearing expressionistic.

Salvador Dali (1904 1989)

Salvador Dali is among the most versatile and prolific artists of the twentieth
century. Though chiefly remembered for his painterly output, in the course of his long
career he successfully turned to sculpture, printmaking, fashion, advertising, writing,
and, perhaps most famously, filmmaking in his collaborations with Luis Bunuel and
Alfred Hitchcock. Dali was renowned for his flamboyant personality as much as for his
undeniable technical virtuosity. In his early use of organic morphology, his work bears
the stamp of fellow Spaniards Pablo Picasso and Joan Mir. His paintings also evince a
fascination for Classical and Renaissance art, clearly visible through his hyper-realistic
style and religious symbolism of his later work. Dali is most often associated with
the Surrealist movement, despite his formal expulsion from the group in 1934 for his
reactionary political views.
Dali's manner of revealing the gap between reality and illusion influenced all
manner of modern artists. Beyond developing his own symbolic language, Dali
elaborated a way to represent the inner mind. He is considered one of the major
Surrealists who used shock and unease to illustrate moments of pleasure, and in this
his work remains highly contemporary. Though some second generation Surrealists,
likeJoseph Cornell, continued working in representational modes, other artists, like
many Abstract Expressionists, drew on Dali's belief in mining the subconscious.
Painters

such

as Robert

Motherwell,

who

first

showed

as

Surrealists

at Guggenheim's Art of This Century gallery, also deeply admired Dali's way of
personalizing the political and vice versa.

Salvador Dalis Masterpiece

This iconic and much-reproduced painting depicts time as a series of melting

watches surrounded by swarming ants that hint at decay, an organic process in which
Dali held an unshakeable fascination. The important distinction between hard and soft
objects, associated by Dali with order and putrefaction respectively, informs his work
method in subverting inherent textual properties: the softening of hard objects and
corresponding hardening of soft objects. It is likely that Dali was using the clocks to
symbolize mortality (specifically his own) rather than literal time, as the melting flesh
in the painting's center is loosely based on Dali's profile. The cliffs that provide the
backdrop are taken from images of Catalonia, Dali's home.

References:
Anirudh. (2014, October 30). 10 MOST FAMOUS PAINTINGS OF THE RENAISSANCE.
Retrieved October 1, 2016, from https://learnodo-newtonic.com/famous-renaissancepaintings
Auricchio, Laura. Claude Monet (18401926). In Heilbrunn Timeline
of Art

History.

New

York:

The

Metropolitan

Museum

of Art,

2000.

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cmon/hd_cmon.htm (October 2004)

Biography.com Editors. (2014, December 23). Claude Monet Biography.
Retrieved October 1, 2016, from http://www.biography.com/people/claude-monet9411771
Caravaggio

Biography.

(n.d.).

Retrieved

October

1,

2016,

from

http://www.caravaggio-foundation.org/biography.html
CARAVAGGIO MICHELANGELO MERISI da (1573-1610). (n.d.). Retrieved October
1, 2016, from http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/his/CoreArt/art/bar_cvggo.html
The Art Story Contributors. (n.d.). Salvador Dali Biography. Retrieved October
1, 2016, from http://www.theartstory.org/artist-dali-salvador.htm