Ten sublime moments of painting of all time

1

The Trinity

ANDRÉI RUBLIOV: 1410 APROX.

Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

The highest achievement in icon painting, The Trinity has a unique force. Rubliov deals with this topic following the Christian-Orthodox tradition: three angels symbolize the mystery of the unity between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The artist resorts to antiperspective to avoid any theatralizations. As a consequence, the spectator is drawn towards the circular movement of the city, and when the contemplation is quiet, it surrenders to being swallowed by the spiritual whirlwind he is challenged with.

 

2

The birth of Venus

SANDRO BOTTICELLI: 1483

Uffizi Gallery, Florence

Venus appears, nude, as if she were the center of the universe, while the winds bathe her with roses. Botticelli, enthusiastic follower of the humanistic tenets, turns his Aphrodite –Venus– into Urania, emerging fully-grown from the sea, which has fertilized Uranus’ severed genitals: beauty arises from violence and prevails over violence. The Renaissance rediscovery of classical antiquity is embodied in a woman that Botticelli presents as the synthesis between sensuousness and wisdom.

 

3

The last supper

LEONARDO DA VINCI: 1495-1497

Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan

Since painting is, always, a break in time, The last supper is the grand finale of the crucial moment. Leonardo is reproducing the moment immediately after Christ announced that there was a betrayer among his apostles. In an attempt to capture this moment, he gives the evangelical scene a dramatically innovative outlook, and sets up four choral groups. Insurmountable masterpiece as regards construction of perspective, the last supper transforms itself into a motionless dance dominated by a tense and powerful balance.

 

4

The School of Athens

RAFAEL SANZIO: 1511

Vatican Museums, Rome

We could consider it as the visual manifesto of Humanism. In this work, Rafael seeks to express the union between nature and spirit, as well as close communication between the ancient and the modern. Framed in an architectural design genuinely Renaissance, Plato, pointing to heaven, and Aristotle, to the ground, preside over the Assembly of Wisdom. The harmony of the set is extraordinary: the embodiment of an ideal.

 

5

Melencholia I

ALBRECHT DURERO: 1514

National Galery of Karlsrhue, Germany

The iconography of melancholy dates back to the Egyptians: man or woman with the head resting on his/her hand. This enigmatic and disturbing spiritual state was associated, since the Renaissance, to creative talent. Durer succeeds in grasping it in his engraving on the topic with a unique perfection. A mosaic of fascinating and disturbing elements. The dog, the magic square, the truncated rhombohedron, the sphere. And, dominating the scene, avid and unsatisfied the winged lady, the angel of melancholy.

 

6

The last judgment

MIGUEL ÁNGEL BUONARROTI: 1537-1541

Sistine Chapel, Rome

Three decades after painting The Genesis, Michelangelo completes his masterpiece in the Sistine Chapel on painting The Last Judgment. The work is considered as the greatest turning point towards Baroque. Extreme drama presides over the greatest grand finale of human bodies ever painted. The deluge of bodies reveals the power of Christ in all His majesty and sacrificial radicalism of the self-portrait of the artist in the body of Saint Bartholomew.

 

7

David with head of Goliat

MICHELANGELO MERISI DA CARAVAGGIO: 1610

Borghese Gallery, Rome

Reputedly, the artist’s last painting, and, supposedly, self-portrait in Goliath’s face, represents the great turn brought by Caravaggio on European painting. Darkness shrouds the pictorial space and light reverts its Renaissance style, stops shining from the outside and glows from inside the skin. The bodies get burned in a white fire until they achieve an unprecedented dramatic intensity.

 

8

Las Meninas

DIEGO DE VELÁZQUEZ: 1656

Museo del Prado, Madrid

It represents the zenith of Velazquez’s talent, Las Meninas is the ultimate analysis of the act of painting. The picture is, simultaneously, a development of the Baroque motive evoked by the artist in his studio, a group portrait and a self-portrait of the painter himself. Above all, this masterpiece is a self-portrait of painting itself, an analysis of its essence and a magnetic game of mirrors in which the spectator feels inevitably caught.

 

9

Card players

PAUL CÉZANNE: 1656

Musée d’Orsay, Paris

Last painting of a series of five pivoting around the same theme, Cézanne reaches the quintessence of his aesthetic conception: the predominance of form, extreme language economy, geometric foundation of space, continuity of chromatic display. The latest version of Card players is a synthesis of classicism and modernity, as well as a precursor of avant-gardes that worshipped Cézanne as their ultimate point of reference.

10

Guernica

PABLO PICASSO: 1937

Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid

In this large format masterpiece, painted exclusively in black and white, and a wide range of grey shades, Picasso brings the cubist revolution to its highest level of development. The tradition of the “disaster of war”, initiated by Goya, gives way to this violent, airtight painting with abundant symbolisms. Its content transcends the historical moment that triggered its conception, and acquires, through a tragic throb, a universal category.