A Calm Sea (1642) by Simon de Vlieger

Two Wine Glasses (1874) by John Singer Sargent

The Garden of Eden by Nicolas Poussin

The Swamp (1900) by Gustav Klimt

Richter - Atlas 2

190225. Exceptionalism.

Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830, British) ~ Margaret, Countess of Blessington, 1822

Édouard Manet

Tobias and the Angel (detail), Filippino Lippi, c. 1472 - 1482

Damien Hirst (British, 1965), Veil of Mother’s Tenderness, 2017. Oil on canvas, 108 x 72 in.

© Robert Frank

Charles A. Csuri A Frozen Moment (2000)

oil on wood, 1637

In Ali Smith’s How to be Both, she posits that Italian Renaissance painter Francesco Del Cossa was actually a woman living as a man in order to pursue a career as an artist.  Smith interprets this particular section of their fresco as being a hidden self portrait.  The figure’s androgynous features are mirrored by their props; they hold both the hoop and the arrow, balancing phallic and yonic symbols.  These two objects are the only break from perfect symmetry in their styling (both garb and hair), and as they glance towards the hoop, their body is adjusted into light contrapposto.