Sphinx, Satyr and Friends
See below photos for text. Thanks!
Sphinx, Satyr and Friends
I photographed this series of images in 2011 at the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia. They are a portion of the wall decorations in The Gallery of the History of Ancient Painting. The first url below features a panoramic view of the gallery where some of this ornamentation is visible. The Greek revival style room features neoclassical marble sculptures by Antonio Canova. It was designed by Leo von Klenze as commissioned by Tsar Nickolas I in 1838. This gallery is part of his work on the New Hermitage, a public museum that originally housed the Romanov collection of antiquities, paintings, coins and medals, cameos, prints and drawings, and books.
The walls are covered with human and animal forms interwoven with flowers and foliage. Such decorative ornamentation is called grotesque. The word comes from the same Latin root as "grotto", meaning a small cave. Originally an extravagant style of Ancient Roman decorative art, such designs were fashionable as fresco wall decoration, floor mosaics, etc.. They were rediscovered and then copied in Italy at the end of the 15th century. Grotesque ornament received a further impetus from discoveries of original Roman frescoes at Pompeii and the other buried sites from the middle of the 18th century. Spreading from Italian to the other languages, the term is used for types of decorative patterns using curving foliage elements.
In art, grotesques are ornamental arrangements of arabesques with interlaced garlands and small and fantastic human and animal figures. Themes such as plant/animal hybrids and metamorphosis are common, as well as vines, flowers, shrines, frames and pagan entities - all charming and fanciful with no particular regard to logic or perspective. I find them colorful and fun; an amazing continuation of ancient imagination into the present day.
These and 7 others in the series will be available as cards and prints from Kindred Paths in Salt Lake City very soon. Look for them!
For more information see http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/html_En/08/hm88_0_1_38.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grotesque .
Gretchen Faulk
Sphinx, Satyr and Friends
I photographed this series of images in 2011 at the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia. They are a portion of the wall decorations in The Gallery of the History of Ancient Painting. The first url below features a panoramic view of the gallery where some of this ornamentation is visible. The Greek revival style room features neoclassical marble sculptures by Antonio Canova. It was designed by Leo von Klenze as commissioned by Tsar Nickolas I in 1838. This gallery is part of his work on the New Hermitage, a public museum that originally housed the Romanov collection of antiquities, paintings, coins and medals, cameos, prints and drawings, and books.
The walls are covered with human and animal forms interwoven with flowers and foliage. Such decorative ornamentation is called grotesque. The word comes from the same Latin root as "grotto", meaning a small cave. Originally an extravagant style of Ancient Roman decorative art, such designs were fashionable as fresco wall decoration, floor mosaics, etc.. They were rediscovered and then copied in Italy at the end of the 15th century. Grotesque ornament received a further impetus from discoveries of original Roman frescoes at Pompeii and the other buried sites from the middle of the 18th century. Spreading from Italian to the other languages, the term is used for types of decorative patterns using curving foliage elements.
In art, grotesques are ornamental arrangements of arabesques with interlaced garlands and small and fantastic human and animal figures. Themes such as plant/animal hybrids and metamorphosis are common, as well as vines, flowers, shrines, frames and pagan entities - all charming and fanciful with no particular regard to logic or perspective. I find them colorful and fun; an amazing continuation of ancient imagination into the present day.
These and 7 others in the series will be available as cards and prints from Kindred Paths in Salt Lake City very soon. Look for them!
For more information see http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/html_En/08/hm88_0_1_38.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grotesque .
Gretchen Faulk