jpf

A helpful site to identify 10-18th c. artists is www.artbank-oldmaster.com. It provides the artist's name, surname and aka and allows you to search with partial information.

brookwood

Oh yes, the Leonardo of Venice.
Of course there are lots of Leonardo guys in Italy! Lots of them from Venice, too. But only one standout Leonardo unless one wants to consider Leonardo di Caprio. And there is only 1 Raphael and one Titian when discussing Italian art.

As for Dan's "crappy book", a friend of mine saw him in the bank the other day. He was crying because his last royalty check only had 5 zeros to the right of the first significant digit. Some of the others had 6! Filthy lucre! Have some people no shame? They take money for anything.

I enjoy it when people bash a best seller that earns the author millions.
But I also wonder when they will write a better one.

I had a cocky programmer friend who made disparaging comments about Windows. I asked him if he could write a better one. He said he could. His boss asked him how long? His reply, give me a weekend. The boss said, OK. I will relieve you of your daily job duties for a week,but if you don't produce, you're fired.

Hmm. The offer vanished. No replacement appeared.

Sort of like music critic Paul Hume, the one whom HST threatened with a good old fashioned Missouri discussion. He made a critical comment about the New York Philharmonic once -- the horns were on the brink of diaster. The principal horn player is said to have called Hume on the phone and offered him a tryout. Hume declined to appear. I doubt if he knew which end of that instrument to blow in.

ThinGorjus

I did find one use for Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code." It made a nice tray for holding my martini glasses.

Using your logic, brickwood, Paris Hilton is a fantastic actress because her porno is #1 in sales. Great barometer of taste, sweetie. Art=commerce. That is not art, that is called "mart," as in KMART.

Money does NOT create taste. I guess Barbara Kruger's irony escapes you.

You probably think Gary Indiana is a town in the Midwest.

cigalechanta

John...some people do think money can buy taste.

bob_brown

I thought Gary Indiana wrote Dark Icons.

Are you trying to tell me that Gary Indiana is NOT a town/city in the midwest??? Then where the duece is it?

I never thought the city was "mid west" but more "mid east" because it is east of St. Louis and much closer to the Atlantic than it is to the Pacific by a 1,000 or so miles.

But if not mid west where is it?
Upper north!?

As for saying The Da Vinci Code is crap and that people who enjoyed it have no taste, I take mild umbrage. I read it, enjoyed it, did not bet torqued out of shape by it and will read it some again.

Pray tell me, who died and left you the right to set the standards for other people?

As was said, where is your best seller?
You can say you did not like Brown's work, but don't tell me I didn't!!

And, you don't set my standards any more than I set yours.

As my Chinese friend said, who made a perfect score on the math part of the SAT but had a bit of a problem with English, No likee, no readee.

And as the woman said to Boswell, "Your dictionary has dirty words in it." And he said, "And you, Madam, have been looking for them."

cigalechanta

bob_brown, I also like for the same situation: My mind is in the gutter when I'm only picking up yours.

tondalaya

Are the ferret and ermine related?

Giovanna

You are correct ThinGorjus, the painting is on tour. We were fortunate to see the exhibit at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. I loved the painting. We thought one of our nieces looks like the young woman in the painting. Interesting Bookchick that you thought the same thing about your friend!

I didn't care for the DaVinci Code either; thought Angels and Demons was better. Neither book a favorite, however.

RufusTFirefly

Of course The Da Vinci Code is not an especially great, well-written work of art. So what. We all need some easy-reading nonsense now and then. I read detective books for entertainment--but I don't confuse them with Shakespeare, Hemingway, or Grass. They are just fun.

ira

> While he was alive, Leonardo was called Leonardo,...<

His friends called him Nardo.

ira

>Are the ferret and ermine related?<

"The ferret is a member of the Mustelidae family. The family Mustelidae has been around for a very long time; it is probably the oldest extant (living) family in the Carnivora, which means there are lots of different subgroups within the major group. This family includes the Mink, Ermine, Weasel, (sea)Otter, Black-Footed Ferret, Skunk, Fisher, Marten, Badger, Wolverine and the European polecat."

From
http://www.ohioferret.org/FAQ/showfaq.asp?c=7&

ira

>And as the woman said to Boswell, "Your dictionary has dirty words in it." And he said, "And you, Madam, have been looking for them."<

Are you sure that wasn't Dr. Johnson to whom she was speaking?

ira

>"Lady with an Ermine" is the portrait of the 17 years old Cecilia Gallerani, the mistress of Lodovico Sforza.<

Interesting analysis of Nardo's portraits of women at
http://employees.oneonta.edu/farbera...o_garrard.html

tedgale

Re how it got into the Czartoryski museum in Krakow:

The portrait of the Lady with an Ermine was bought by Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski in Italy and incorporated into The Czartoryskis’ family collections in 1800
- www.krakowinfo.com

Beatchick

LOL, ThinG! Is there a raspberry martini on that tray pour moi? Or is that too gauche to set on the Dan-Brown-motif tray???

I haven't read Dan Brown's book so can make no assessments of my own, trashingly or glowingly.

Fairhope

"This family includes the Mink, Ermine, Weasel, (sea)Otter, Black-Footed Ferret, Skunk, Fisher, Marten, Badger, Wolverine and the European polecat." --and maybe an ex-wife or two

ThinGorjus

Gary Indiana is an art critic. He used to write for the Greenwich Village Voice in the 1980's. He wrote an excellent essay on "art" and "mart" in which he questioned the taste those who look at or purchase art.

Years ago, whilst at the MOMA in Manhattan, I overheard a woman say to her friend, "I don't understand this Jackson Pollock guy, but the black in that painting over there would go perfectly with a gray chair in my foyer. I wonder if they have any prints for sale in the book store?" That is "mart."

And that is why many "love" Dan Brown. He goes along with their misguided aesthetic about what literature is about. The same people who lionize Dan Brown are the same type of people who hang a painting of a lighthouse over their sofa because it goes with their decor.

"Mart" doesn't require you to think.

FauxSteMarie

The reason there are very few Leonardo's (Leonardo da Vinci's ??) is that Leonardo painted very few pictures. It took him forever to finish anything. That was one of the reasons Raphael got the commission for the Pope's apartments in the Vatican and not Leonardo.

By the way, I saw Raphael's "School of Athens" at The Vatican Museum last week. Not to be missed if you are going. It blew me away.

We also saw some terrific modern religiously inspired art in the collection that was super. It is in the Barberini rooms (a turn off on the long walk to The Sistine Chapel).

The Vatican Museum has terrific gift shops by the way. It is not just religious items either. I did some damage to a credit card there and I am not Catholic. Plenty of things for everyone.

ira

>Gary Indiana is an art critic. He ..wrote an excellent essay on "art" and "mart" in which he questioned the taste those who look at or purchase art.

....The same people who lionize Dan Brown are the same type of people who hang a painting of a lighthouse over their sofa because it goes with their decor."

Oh. Lordy. Le plus ca change, le plus ca meme chose. (Please forgive me for not having the proper accent marks.)

The very fact that someone would call him(her)self "Gary Indiana" is a cue.

That some people think that we should decorate our homes with "great art" is another cue.

If I had to wake up every morning to the ceiling of the Sistine Chaple I would go mad.

Bernard Berenson made a fortune authentictating "Great Art", Pablo Picasso made a fortune creating "Great Art"

Could this simply be an attempt to create a market in "ART"?

Beatchick

Yes, but Leonardo was a perfectionist. There's a reason that two of the most recognized paintings in the world belong to him:
Mona Lisa
The Last Supper

And he had other things besides art taking away his attention. He was constantly working on engineering problems. Many people were constantly pulling him in many different directions trying to get him to solve problems.

He was absolutely brilliant; his mind was constantly working! He studied human anatomy, he studied the physics of the flow of water or the affects of light and color. His notebooks to this day are perused by engineering students looking for new ideas.