OliveOyl
Well-known member
- Messages
- 302
Jean Fouquet: Virgin and Child (Melun diptych) / tempera on panel / c.1450
Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp,
In the Zuid. South.
Imposing.
Intimidating.
Inviting.
Walkable from my pension.
Used to visit whenever I could.
I have this love affair
with museums.
Lose myself in their silence,
the gentle shuffles from painting
to painting.
Some wormed their way
under my skin.
In Antwerp it’s the Fouquet Virgin.
Not sure what fascinates me more:
Its brilliance or its 15th Century involuntary
surrealism. The virgin’s fashionably shaved hair
and eyebrows,
the colours of the ‘tricolore’:
blue background, blue dress,
red angels, ghostly white flesh,
and a wink at 15th century voyeurs:
one hard breast (which today could only
be considered artificially enhanced) exposed,
ostensibly to feed the little old man-child.
Long before the French Revolution,
court and church still paid handsomely
for art that allowed looking without guilt.
~Rose Mary Boehm~
Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp,
In the Zuid. South.
Imposing.
Intimidating.
Inviting.
Walkable from my pension.
Used to visit whenever I could.
I have this love affair
with museums.
Lose myself in their silence,
the gentle shuffles from painting
to painting.
Some wormed their way
under my skin.
In Antwerp it’s the Fouquet Virgin.
Not sure what fascinates me more:
Its brilliance or its 15th Century involuntary
surrealism. The virgin’s fashionably shaved hair
and eyebrows,
the colours of the ‘tricolore’:
blue background, blue dress,
red angels, ghostly white flesh,
and a wink at 15th century voyeurs:
one hard breast (which today could only
be considered artificially enhanced) exposed,
ostensibly to feed the little old man-child.
Long before the French Revolution,
court and church still paid handsomely
for art that allowed looking without guilt.
~Rose Mary Boehm~
