painting of the month

Light and Colour (Goethe's Theory) - The Morning after the Deluge -- J.M.W. Turner, 1843

veiled beauty

The Milwaukee Art Museum will be hosting Raphael's La Donna Velata or The Veiled Woman through June and they seem really and rightfully excited about it. This beautiful work was painted circa 1516 in response to Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, featuring a model named Margherita Luti who was probably Raphael's lover. That gold detail on the sleeve is gorgeous, along with the veiled one's intriguing expression and the wisp of hair by her arched eyebrow.

Back to Mona Lisa, just noting another excerpt from Robert Hughes' American Visions about how La Gioconda first came to the U.S. in 1962 and scads of people, i.e., over a million, went to see her at the Met in NY, averaging less than 8 seconds per view. Hughes included Andy Warhol's comment at the time: "Gee, why don't they just send a reproduction? Nobody would know the difference." Or maybe Nat King Cole put it more eloquently when he sang about all those dreams brought to Mona Lisa's doorstep--or really to the thick pane of protective glass surrounding that "cold and lonely/lovely work of art."