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Capturing Brilliance: 1000 Portraits of Genius Illuminate the World
With its impressive number of masterpieces, biographies, and commentaries on works, this book presents and analyses different portraits, consequently exposing to the reader, and to any art lover, a reflection of the evolution of society, and above all the upheavals of a genre that, over 300 centuries of painting, has shaped the history of art.
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1000 Portraits of Genius
Exhibition: The Art of Portraiture in the Louvre Collections Date: May 30 2018 – Sep 03 2018 Venue: The National Art Center, Tokyo Since Antiquity, portraits have been commissioned to represent important people, figures, heroes and gods. Over time, this artistic genre has evolved from the embellished Greek marble sculptures to contemporary paintings, photography and abstract works. While the specific aesthetic style of the portrait often varies over time, the main purpose of portraiture, has remained consistent-to depict the personality, characteristics or essence of a person or important figure by using the face as the dominant feature of the composition. The first known portraits can be traced back to prehistoric…
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The Face that Launched a Thousand Ships
It was Christopher Marlowe who coined the infamous line regarding Helen of Troy; ‘the face that launched a thousand ships’. I have to say, I do feel sorry for Helen! Put in a position where she was, effectively, responsible for a ten-year war, loss of lives, and the sacking of a city. I ask: was it even her choice to leave Menelaus? Sure, the story goes that she and Paris fell in love and escaped Sparta and her husband by fleeing to Troy. But, really, what if this wasn’t the true story? What if she was actually in love with Menelaus, and was just kidnapped by Paris? Admittedly, if Paris…









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