Art For Art’s Sake

The Train To Heaven  Wroclaw, Poland

Just an incredible idea that comes off beautifully.

(It is a relic of the Nazi era in Poland
is 70 feet high and weighs 90 tons)

[img]https://i.imgur.com/IUtvpiq.jpg?1[/img]

Pieter Bruegel the Elder  (c.1525-1530 – 1569)

Winter Landscape with Ice-skaters and Bird-trap (1565)

Bruegel's winter scenes always have ravens in them.

(He was in the first generation of painters not to make
religion the natural subject of painting & never painted portraits-
-from wiki)

[img]https://i.imgur.com/xsTKRif.jpg?2[/img]

Emily Carr (1871-1945)

Wild Lilies painted when she was only 22
need say no more

(One of the first painters in Canada to adopt a
Modernist and Post-Impressionist style – as per wiki)

[img]https://i.imgur.com/nj8J96v.jpg?1[/img]

Pietro Torrigiano broke Michel Agnolo's nose in a fit of jealousy
at the academy of Lorenzo dei Medici in Florence when both were
students of art (Michel Agnolo was anglicized to Michaelangelo). 

Torrigiano went into voluntary exile while Agnolo went through life with a broken nose.

[img]https://i.imgur.com/6RD4afM.jpg?1[/img]

Torrigiano arrived in the London of Henry VIII and succeeded in winning
a contract for £1500 to make the tomb of Henry VII in Westminster Abbey. 
The contract read to “make and work well, cleanly, surely, workmanly, curiously
and substantially a very special artwork”.

Torrigiano conceived and designed a work of white marble and cast bronze
and introduced for the first time concepts of modern style to a largely medieval Britain.
Cherubs made their first appearance and Torrigiano's work slowly started the British “renaissance”.

[img]https://i.imgur.com/ho0wRof.jpg?1[/img]

Lisbon Street Art

Following the revolution of April 25, 1974 there was an explosion of political murals,
and today artistic graffiti is sponsored by the City Council.

There are dozens of murals .. take a look through the link …

https://www.lisbonlux.com/magazine/lisbon-street-art.html

This fox and racoon were created combining painting and sculpture,
using old tyres, bumpers, computer parts and other discarded stuff by Bordal II.

[img]https://i.imgur.com/Skc30aZ.jpg?1[/img]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/T8iIGfP.jpg?1[/img]

Frances I of France (reign 1515-1547) was a great patron of the arts, best known
for bringing the goldsmith and sculptor Benevenuto Cellini to work for him.
The most well known of these works is a gold salt cellar that Cellini describes
in his autobiography which is best known for being full of fiction except for his
descriptions of the creations of his major works.  This is how Cellini describes his work:-

“… it was oval in form, standing about two-thirds of a cubit (12 inches)
wrought in solid gold, and worked entirely from the chisel. …it represented
Sea and Earth, seated, with their legs interlaced …  The Sea carried a trident
in his right hand, and in his left I put a ship of delicate workmanship to hold the salt.
Below him were his four sea-horses, fashioned like our horses, from the head to the
front hoofs; all the rest of their body, from the middle backwards, resembled a fish,
and the tails of these creatures were agreeably interwoven.  Above this group the Sea
sat throned in an attitude of pride and dignity; around him were many kinds of fishes
and other creatures of the ocean.  The water was represented by waves, and enamelled
in the appropriate colour”.

[img]https://i.imgur.com/Mp4v3ue.jpg?1[/img]

“I had portrayed Earth under the form of a very handsome woman, holding her
horn of plenty, entirely nude like the male figure; in her left hand I placed a little temple of
Ionic architecture, most delicately wrought which was meant to contain the pepper. 
Beneath her were the handsomest living creatures which the earth produces; and the
rocks were partly enamelled, partly left in gold.

The whole piece reposed on a base of ebony, properly proportioned, but with a projecting
cornice, upon which I introduced four golden figures in rather more than half-relief.
They represented Night, Day, Twilight and Dawn.”

[img]https://i.imgur.com/OlSI00T.jpg?1[/img]

“When I exhibited this piece to His Majesty he uttered a loud cry of astonishment
and could not satiate his eyes with gazing at it.  Then he bade me take it back to my house,
saying he would tell me at the proper time what I should have to do with it.  So I carried it
home, and sent at once to invite several of my best friends; we dined gaily together, placing
the salt-cellar in the middle of the table, and thus we were the first to use it.”

(This last sentence should be taken with a pinch of salt)