Italian Painting 3

Artist Caravaggio
Title Narcissus
Style Italian Baroque
Date 1594-1596
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 110 × 92 cm (43.3 × 36.2 in)
Current location Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica - Rome
Narcissus, also known as Narkissos (Greek: Νάρκισσος), was a hunter from Greek mythology known for his great beauty. He fell in love with his reflection not realizing it was a reflection. The word narcissist is derived from his name.
The painting conveys an air of brooding melancholy: the figure of Narcissus is locked in a circle with his reflection, surrounded by darkness, so that the only reality is inside this self-regarding loop.
Caravaggio was born as Michelangelo Merisi in Italy around 1571. He was orphaned at age 11 and apprenticed with a painter in Milan. He moved to Rome, where his work became popular for the tenebrism technique he used, which used shadow to emphasize lighter areas. His career, however, was short-lived. Caravaggio killed a man during a brawl and fled Rome. He died not long after, on July 18, 1610.
Much of Caravaggio's early works featured chubby, pretty young boys done up as angels or lutenists or his favorite saint, John the Baptist. Many of the boys in the paintings are naked or loosely clothed.
Even though Caravaggio was shunned after his death, he eventually came to be recognized as one of the founding fathers of modern painting. His work greatly influenced so many future masters, from Diego Velazquez to Rembrandt.

Italian Painting 2

Artist Francesco Hayez
Title The kiss ( Il Bacio)
Style Italian Romanticism
Date 1859
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 110 × 88 cm (43.3 × 35 in)
Current location Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
The Kiss The painting represents a couple from the Middle Ages, embracing while they kiss each other. It is among the most passionate and intense representations of a kiss in the history of western art.This painting has been regarded as a symbol of Italian Romanticism. At a more superficial level, the painting is the representation of a passionate kiss, so putting itself in accordance with the principles of Romanticism, by emphasising deep feelings rather than rational thought, and presenting a reinterpretation and reevaluation of the Middle Ages in a patriotic and nostalgic key.On a deeper level, the painting aims to portray the spirit of the Risorgimento. The man wears red, white and green, representing the Italian patriots fighting for independence from the Austro-Hungarian empire. The girl's pale blue dress signifies France, which in 1859 (the year of the painting's creation) made an alliance with the Kingdom of Piedmont and Sardinia.
Francesco Hayez was an Italian painter, the leading artist of Romanticism in mid-19th-century Milan, renowned for his grand historical paintings, political allegories and exceptionally fine portraits.

Italian Painting 1

Artist Leonardo da Vinci
Title The Last Supper ( Il Cenacolo or L'Ultima Cena)
Style Florence Renaissance refectories tradition
Date 1495-1498
Medium Tempera on gesso, pitch and mastic
Dimensions 460 cm × 880 cm (180 in × 350 in)
Current location Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan, Italy

The Last Supper covers an end wall of the dining hall at the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy. The theme was a traditional one for refectories, The Last Supper specifically portrays the reaction given by each apostle when Jesus said one of them would betray him. All twelve apostles have different reactions to the news, with various degrees of anger and shock.

Leonardo da Vinci
Born on April 15, 1452, in Vinci, Italy, Leonardo da Vinci was the beloved child of a landowner and a peasant girl. Raised by his father, he began apprenticing at the age of 14 under the artist Verrocchio. Within six years, he was a master artist and began taking commissions from wealthy clients. His best-known works are two of the most famous paintings of all time, the "Mona Lisa" and "The Last Supper." Da Vinci's scientific inquiries fill 13,000 pages, ranging from anatomy to war machines.Da Vinci has been called a genius and the archetypal Renaissance man. His talents in arguably extended far beyond his artistic works. Like many leaders of Renaissance humanism, he did not see a divide between science and art. His observations and inventions were recorded in 13,000 pages of notes and drawings, including designs for flying machines (some 400 years before the Wright’s brothers’ first success), plant studies, war machinery, anatomy and architecture. The famous artist died in Amboise, France, on May 2, 1519.
In an era when left-handedness was considered the devil's work and lefties were often forced to use their right hand, Leonardo was an unrepentant southpaw. It has been suggested that this "difference" was an element of his genius, since his detachment allowed him to see beyond the ordinary. He even wrote backwards, and his writings are easily deciphered only with a mirror.