During today’s class we talked about the Portrait of the Artist and his Wife by the Master of Frankfurt. This painting depicted him and his wife but it was a self portrait. We discussed the different clues that help us realize this. The first is that his right hand is hidden but it looks like his left which shows that he was looking at a mirror while painting it. His eyes that also look directly at the viewer shows that he was looking at the mirror while painting, hence the direction of his eyes. What was most interesting though, were the flies that he included. These flies looked to be huge in comparison to everything else in the painting. However, when considering the size of the entire painting itself, it turns out that the flies are life size, creating an illusion and tricking the eye.
After this, we came upon the topic of Italy’s progression and how it was more of trying to be better or more natural, than the one before. Speaking of natural, we also discussed the value of observing nature and being able to draw it. For example, both Albrecht Durer and Leonardo da Vinci drew nature. However, the way they approached this topic was different. Durer tried to capture the way things are, drawing plants in their natural environment. Leonardo da Vinci, on the other hand, isolated the plants from their environments because he was trying to understand their systems like he did with much else. This showed the difference between Northern and Italian art to some respects because the North focused much more on detail while Italy tried more to understand the general idea, or system, and get a bigger picture idea of their subject.