Thursday, January 31, 2013

Thoughts in thoughts in thoughts...

Recently my friends and I were talking about the extremely detailed vectors that a lot of game designers have to make. I was actually able to bring this image up and compare the extreme detail that this painter did to the computer images that you can zoom in on when creating them. When I think about real detail, I love to look at the things that artists created back before the 1900's because I believe they had a real eye for detail. This particular image is the size of a postcard! I think that's absolutely amazing! One of the other things that I love about this image, is that she put her thoughts, her mindset in the mirror. It shows what she is thinking about as she is reading this prayer book. Also, Mary is seen twice in this painting. Once in the foreground and also in the mirror sitting in front of Mary, the mother of Jesus. I love the detail that went into this, and also the image of a woman's thoughts. The church was a big influence in that age.
When I step back and take a long look at it, I think of those fun house mirrors that are facing each other. So when you look at them you have hundreds of images of yourself seemingly going farther and farther back in space. But here it's only one way. We only see how she thinks about her meditation. What would not surprise me, was if the painter put another mirror behind the main Mary in the window image showing what she would be thinking of she really was sitting in a church with Mary, Jesus mom. That would not surprise me with all the detail that is already going on in this image. It still amazes me how one artist can make a painting so small and detailed and do such an amazing job at it.

2 comments:

  1. I get a bit stunned myself at the sight of old art and it's detail that many artists today don't even capture in Photoshop. Really makes me wonder.
    While some flaws can't seem to escape me in this image (I feel her head is a bit too big on the left), they just seem to not matter in reality
    You hinted in class about Durer's technical skill being of a higher caliber simply because his medium choice was difficult? I think the same thing applies here. The flaws seem to not matter when considering the primitive art tech and size of the workspace.

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  2. This is quite amazing that amount of objects and characters the artist fit into the space since it is only a few inches in size. The subject of religion was very popular the content is nothing new but the way the artist when about expressing those ideas was very inventive. Also, we see a dog again, most likely meaning she is a married woman.

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