Friday 2 March 2007

Zzziingg! "Woah, that was close!!" - # 34



At Ham House we have taken down a large picture of the Battle of Lepanto for cleaning and inspection. A team of researchers and technicians arrived. I spotted a tiny incident, about 3cm x 3cm, where the artist depicted a tiny individual tragedy in the gigantic battle. The oarsman looks over his shoulder in alarm as the sharpshooter beside him is hit. Many of the figures are indistinct and carelessly drawn, almost lumps of plasticine, but here and there all over the picture the artist has detailed intense moments of hand to hand fighting, like this one: an interesting technique.

6 comments:

  1. Great spotting! Like the large and close-up views.

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  2. Will they only clean the painting, not restore it? Because upon enlargement I noticed a lot of "boo-boos", using the technical term here...

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  3. I love to find little gems like that. How many people have passed this by without giving it a second thought. Always makes me wonder what the artist was imagining..."hee, hee, hee, wonder how many people will view this before it gets noticed, hee, hee, hee)

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  4. no alarm, I hope, with your nose so close ;)

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  5. sounds very interesting~~~
    repair the old/historical things really needs technique!!
    :))

    have the nice weekend
    jing

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  6. Actually... I noticed. But I admit that's only because I always look at battle paintings specifically for smaller episodes, since usually the general view is historically inaccurate. (Unless we are talking about Van Orley's Pavia tapestries, where some of the details mirror our sources.)

    Lovely job restoring it!

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