fuck yeah art history

I and the Village
Marc Chagall
1911
The Museum of Modern Art, New York City, New York, USA

Painted the year after Chagall came to Paris, I and the Village evokes his memories of his native Hasidic community outside Vitebsk. In the village, peasants and animals lived side by side, in a mutual dependence here signified by the line from peasant to cow, connecting their eyes. The peasant’s flowering sprig, symbolically a tree of life, is the reward of their partnership. For Hasids, animals were also humanity’s link to the universe, and the painting’s large circular forms suggest the orbiting sun, moon (in eclipse at the lower left), and earth. (From the MoMA website.)

Boy with Squirrel (Henry Pelham)
John Singleton Copley
1765
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, USA

American portrait artist John Singleton Copley showcased this piece at the exhibition of the Incorporated Society of Artists in 1766, making it the first American painting to be shown abroad. Born in Boston, Copley’s mother remarried Peter Pelham after Copley’s father died, which proved beneficial to the artist in that Pelham was both an engraver and friends with many local painters. The subject in the above painting is of Copley’s half-brother, Henry Pelham.

Rembrandt Self-portrait Detected under Painting

Advanced X-ray technology has revealed an unfinished self-portrait by the 17th-century Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn. The portrait was detected beneath an oil painting depicting an old man with a gray beard.

(Full story here: http://news.discovery.com/history/rembrandt-self-portrait-111205.html)

Snake Goddess from Knossos
c. 1600 – 1550 BCE (New Palace Period)
Crete/Minoan Culture
Heraklion Archaeological Museum, Crete

The Snake Goddess is a Minoan goddess associated with the snake cult. The snake is both connected with welfare of the household and is a symbol of the underworld deity.  She is wearing a Minoan court costume consisting of a flowing skirt and open bodice.

Faience is a term for earthenware covered with a solid glaze containing crushed quartz, which is the cause for the bluish tint and glassy surface. It was probably imported from Egypt in the Pre-Palace period.

Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California
Albert Bierstadt
1865
Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama

The Abbey in the Oakwood (Abtei im Eichwald)
Caspar David Friedrich
1809-1810
Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany

This painting depicts Gothic church ruins in mid-winter. The trees are stripped of leaves and create a frame for what has become a cemetery. The figures are monks in a processional to a new grave.