Head of an Old Man. Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, 1727-1804
The work of Domenico Tiepolo, the son of Gian Battista Teipolo, the head of the Venetian school of the XVIII century and the last of the great Italian painters. In the period of exhaustion which followed the Renaissance, the Venetian school alone was blessed with genius. The list of painters is indeed impressive when compared with the nonentities of the other Italian schools of the XVIII century. Although Domenico did not display the same great genius as his father, at his best he approached Giambattista so closely that his works have often been confused. Domenico is known as an etcher as well as a painter. In his set of character heads, called the “Raccolta di teste”, there is an etching reproducing the above portrait.
Portrait of James Ward. Gilbert Stuart, 1755-1828
Gilbert Stuart was typical of his time and country in that his art was not national but derived from England, where he received most of his training. His masterful expression of personality, his brilliant brush-work and treatment of light, permit him to be classed among the most gifted artists of his age as the first truly great American artist. The Portrait of Master Ward, painted in 1789, and one of the very few signed works of the artist, was exhibited at the Royal Academy in the year in which it was painted. It is considered by eminent critics the most beautiful of Stuart's paintings in American collections. This graceful lad, portrayed fondling his dog, afterwards became famous as an engraver of animal subjects.
Death on the Pale Horse. Benjamin West, 1738-1820
In its early days, American painting was derived from Europe and especially from the mother country, England. The early XVIII century portraits of prominent Colonials and their families, though valuable as historical documents and not without a naive charm, are halting and provincial as works of art.
The first American painter to win a widely recognized position in the world of art was Benjamin West. In his twenty-second year he went to study in Rome, where he worked for several years in the “grand manner.” Moving to England in 1768, he won favor at once, was appointed historical painter to the King in 1772, and twenty years later, on the death of Reynolds, was elected president of the Royal Academy. The Institute's painting, Death on the Pale Horse, is a study for his grandiose canvas in the Pennsylvania Academy. When it was first exhibited, the artist was acclaimed a second Michelangelo. It is painted mostly in subdued bronze and dull red tones, and shows Death as a splendid youth seated upon a white horse, charging out of the sky at the head of a troop of heroic horsemen. Below him crowds of terrified human beings are fleeing before the vision, idols fall, and wild beasts snarl and cower. The subject is taken from Revelation VI, 8: “And I looked and beheld a pale horse and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.”