GRAVIR LES MONTAGNES... EN PEINTURE: Egypt

Showing posts with label Egypt. Show all posts

Sunday, December 24, 2017

MONT SINAÏ BY JOACHIM PATINIER

JOACHIM PATINIER (1484-1524)

Mount Sinaï or Jabal Musa (2,285 m - 7,496ft)

Egypt

1. In A Rest during the Flight into Egypt, oil on panel, 1515, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.

The painting

There are several versions of this painting painted by Patinir (or Patinier) during his lifetime and after him, by his studio after his death. and according to Patinir. This blog presents four paintings did in 1515, 1516, 1517 and 1518-1520 by Patinir or his workshop. The theme of the Flight into Egypt wa very popular and inspired many other painters from Fra Angelico's to Giotto.
The mountain landscape in the background is supposed to be that of Mount Sinaï, halfway between Egypt and the kingdom of Herod. Of course, the Flemish painter Joachim Patinir had no chance to know what Mount Sinai could look like ! It is therefore imaginary representations that he gave based of landscapes he could see around the area he was living. At the beginning of the 15th century, the representation of a landscape alone was inconceivable, This is why Patinir had to place a religious scene in the middle of his landscapes. These figures could be painted by other artists than him, which interested Patinir being mainly the representation of nature. The landscapes of the Flemish painters of this period have been called "world-landscapes" because the artists seek to place in their painting the maximum of elements representative of the reality of their usual environment - relief, vegetation, buildings, rivers, lakes, characters, animals - and to give an almost unlimited depth to the composition by using the atmospheric perspective.

The mountain

Mount Sinaï (2,285 m - 7,496ft) or Jabal Mūsā or Gabal Mūsā (in arab : "Moses' Mountain" or "Mount Moses"), also known as Mount Horeb or Jebel Musa (a similarly named mountain in Morocco), is a mountain in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt that is a possible location of the biblical Mount Sinai. The latter is mentioned many times in the Book of Exodus (and other books of the Bible) and the Quran. According to Jewish, Christian, and Islamic tradition, the biblical Mount Sinai was the place where Moses received the Ten Commandments.
Mount Sinai is a moderately high mountain near the city of Saint Katherine in the Sinai region. It is next to Mount Katherine (2,629 m - 8,625 ft), the highest peak in Egypt.
Mount Sinai's rocks were formed in the late stage of the Arabian-Nubian Shield's (ANS) evolution. Mount Sinai displays a ring complex that consists of alkaline granites intruded into diverse rock types, including volcanics. The granites range in composition from syenogranite to alkali feldspar granite. The volcanic rocks are alkaline to peralkaline and they are represented by subaerial flows and eruptions and subvolcanic porphyry. Generally, the nature of the exposed rocks in Mount Sinai indicates that they originated from differing depths.
There are two principal routes to the summit. The longer and shallower route, Siket El Bashait, takes about 2.5 hours on foot, though camels can be used. The steeper, more direct route (Siket Sayidna Musa) is up the 3,750 "steps of penitence" in the ravine behind the monastery.
The summit of the mountain has a mosque that is still used by Muslims. It also has a Greek Orthodox chapel, constructed in 1934 on the ruins of a 16th-century church, that is not open to the public. The chapel encloses the rock which is considered to be the source for the biblical Tablets of Stone. At the summit also is "Moses' cave", where Moses was said to have waited to receive the Ten Commandments.

The Painter
Joachim Patinir, also called Patenier was a Flemish Renaissance painter of history and landscape subjects. He was Flemish, from the area of modern Wallonia, but worked in Antwerp, then the centre of the art market in the Low Countries. Patinir was a pioneer of landscape as an independent genre and he was the first Flemish painter to regard himself primarily as a landscape painter. He effectively invented the world landscape, a distinct style of panoramic northern Renaissance landscapes which is Patinir's important contribution to Western art.
There are only five paintings signed by Patinir, but many other works have been attributed to him or his workshop with varying degrees of probability. The ones that are signed read: (Opus) Joachim D. Patinier, the "D" in his signature signifying Dionantensis ("of Dinant"), reflecting his place of origin. The 2007 exhibition at the Museo del Prado in Madrid contained 21 pictures listed as by Patinir or his workshop, and catalogued a further 8 which were not in the exhibition.
Patinir was the friend of not only Dürer, but with Quentin Metsys as well, with whom he often collaborated. The Temptation of St Anthony (Prado) was done in collaboration with Metsys, who added the figures to Patinir's landscape. His career was nearly contemporary with that of the other major pioneer of paintings dominated by landscape, Albrecht Altdorfer, who worked in a very different style.

Saturday, October 21, 2017

SINAÏ / JABEL MUSSA PAINTED BY GIOTTO

GIOTTO (1266-1337)

Mount Sinaï or Jabal Musa (2,285 m - 7,496ft)
Egypt

In The flight into Egypt, fresco, Capella dei Scrovegni, Padua, 1304-1306

The fresco

Around 1305, Giotto executed his most influential work, the interior frescoes of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, also known as the Arena Chapel, Enrico degli Scrovegni commissioned the chapel to serve as a family worship and burial space. The theme of the frescoes is Salvation, and there is an emphasis on the Virgin Mary, as the chapel is dedicated to the Annunciation and to the Virgin of Charity. As was common in the decoration of the medieval period in Italy, the west wall is dominated by the Last Judgement. On either side of the chancel are complementary paintings of the angel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary, depicting the Annunciation. The scene is incorporated into the cycles of The Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary and The Life of Christ. Giotto's inspiration for The Life of the Virgin cycle was probably taken from The Golden Legend by Jacopo da Voragine ans The Life of Christ draws upon the Meditations on the Life of Christ. The frescoes are more than mere illustrations of familiar texts, however, and scholars have found numerous sources for Giotto's interpretations of sacred stories. The cycle is divided into 37 scenes, arranged around the lateral walls in three tiers, starting in the upper register with the story of St. Joachim and St. Anne, the parents of the Virgin, and continuing with her story. The life of Jesus occupies two registers. The Last Judgment fills the entire pictorial space of the counter-façade.

The frescoes of the Scrovegni Chapel are regarded as one of the supreme masterpieces of the Early Renaissance.

The mountain

The latter is mentioned many times in the Book of Exodus (and other books of the Bible) and the Quran. According to Jewish, Christian, and Islamic tradition, the biblical Mount Sinai was the place where Moses received the Ten Commandments.

Mount Sinai is a 2285 meters (7,497 ft) moderately high mountain near the city of Saint Katherine in the Sinai region. It is next to Mount Katherine (at 2,629 m or 8,625 ft), the highest peak in Egypt.

Mount Sinai's rocks were formed in the late stage of the Arabian-Nubian Shield's (ANS) evolution. Mount Sinai displays a ring complex that consists of alkaline granites intruded into diverse rock types, including volcanics. The granites range in composition from syenogranite to alkali feldspar granite. The volcanic rocks are alkaline to peralkaline and they are represented by subaerial flows and eruptions and subvolcanic porphyry. Generally, the nature of the exposed rocks in Mount Sinai indicates that they originated from differing depths.

There are two principal routes to the summit. The longer and shallower route, Siket El Bashait, takes about 2.5 hours on foot, though camels can be used. The steeper, more direct route (Siket Sayidna Musa) is up the 3,750 "steps of penitence" in the ravine behind the monastery.

The summit of the mountain has a mosque that is still used by Muslims. It also has a Greek Orthodox chapel, constructed in 1934 on the ruins of a 16th-century church, that is not open to the public. The chapel encloses the rock which is considered to be the source for the biblical Tablets of Stone. At the summit also is "Moses' cave", where Moses was said to have waited to receive the Ten Commandments.

The painter
Giotto di Bondone known mononymously as Giotto was an Italian painter and architect from Florence during the Late Middle Ages. He worked during the "Gothic or Proto-Renaissance" period.
Giotto's contemporary, the banker and chronicler Giovanni Villani, wrote that Giotto was "the most sovereign master of painting in his time, who drew all his figures and their postures according to nature" and of his publicly recognized "talent and excellence".
In his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, Giorgio Vasari described Giotto as making a decisive break with the prevalent Byzantine style and as initiating "the great art of painting as we know it today, introducing the technique of drawing accurately from life, which had been neglected for more than two hundred years".
That Giotto painted the Arena Chapel and that he was chosen by the Commune of Florence in 1334 to design the new campanile (bell tower) of the Florence Cathedral are among the few certainties about his life. Almost every other aspect of it is subject to controversy: his birth date, his birth place, his appearance, his apprenticeship, the order in which he created his works, whether or not he painted the famous frescoes in the Upper Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi and his burial place.

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

SINAÏ / JABAL MUSA BY JOHN MARTIN

JOHN MARTIN (1789-1854)

Mount Sinaï or Jabal Musa (2, 285 m - 7, 496 ft)

Egypt

In The flight into Egypt, oil on canvas, The MET

The mountain

Saint Catherine's Monastery - visible on the painting above on the right side of the Holy family - is officially called "Sacred Monastery of the God-Trodden Mount Sinai" and lies on the Sinai Peninsula, at the mouth of a gorge, at the foot of Mount Sinai, in the city of Saint Catherine, South Sinai Governorate, Egypt. The monastery is controlled by the autonomous Church of Sinai, part of the wider Eastern Orthodox Church, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Built between 548 and 565, the monastery is one of the oldest working Christian monasteries in the world. The site contains the world's oldest continually operating library, possessing many unique books including the Syriac Sinaiticus and, until 1859, the Codex Sinaiticus. A small town with hotels and swimming pools, called Saint Katherine City, has grown around the monastery.

Sources :

- More about Mont Sinaï

The Painter

John Martin was an English Romantic painter, engraver and illustrator. He was celebrated for his typically vast and melodramatic paintings of religious subjects and fantastic compositions, populated with minute figures placed in imposing landscapes. Martin's paintings, and the engravings made from them, enjoyed great success with the general public—in 1821 Lawrence referred to him as "the most popular painter of his day"—but were lambasted by Ruskin and other critics.

- More about John Martin

Friday, January 6, 2017

JEBEL UWIENAT BY NASA EARTH OBSERVATORY & ISS

NASA EARTH OBSERVATORY (since 1999)
ISS

Jebel Uwienat (1,934m - 6,345ft)

Egypt, Sudan, Lybia border

1. NASA Johnson Space Center, from satellite, March, 20, 2008
2. ISS by french astronaut Thomas Pesquet, December 26, 2016

The mountain

The Jebel Uweinat (1,934m - 6,345ft) in Arabic: جبل العوينات (literally "mountain of springs"), also spelled Al Awaynat, Auenat, Ouenat, Ouinat, Owainat, Oweinat Uweinat, Uweinat Uwenat, Uweynat is a mountain in border between Egypt, Libya and Sudan. The Jebel Uweinat is located in the eastern Sahara, forty kilometers south-southeast of like mountains, the Jebel Arkanu, Libya.

The main source of solid, called Ain Dua, lies on its western foothills. This side is a cliff 600 meters high around which the foot is covered with large rocks fell under the effect of erosion. It is home to oases covered with bushes and herbaceous plants. A total of three valleys are oriented towards the West: Karkur Hamid Idriss and Karkur Karkur Ibrahim. To the East, the massif ends in the valley of Karkur Talh. The climax of the massif in its eastern half, is at the top of the Italia plateau.

The western half of the massif is an intrusion of granite forming concentric rings, the largest of which is 25 kilometers in diameter. The eastern half consists of sandstones forming four distinct trays.

The massif is officially discovered in 1923 by Ahmed Hassanein who, during his exploration, reports the existence of petroglyphs representing lions, giraffes, ostriches, gazelles or even oxen, in a style reminiscent of that of the Bushmen. He tries to cross the massif from west to east but makes a U-turn after traveling forty kilometers without finding an exit.

In the 1930s, each built a cairn at the top of the highest point of the massif.

The photographer
For the second shot posted in this blog, the photographer is Thomas Pesquet on board International Space Station. Thomas Pesquet is a European Space Agency astronaut of French nationality. He is currently on a six-month mission to the International Space Station. Thomas is serving as a flight engineer for Expeditions 50 and 51, launched in November 2016 and returning in May 2017. He previously worked as an aerospace engineer, and is also an airline pilot for Air France.

Sunday, August 2, 2015

SINAÏ / JABAL MUSA PAINTED BY DAVID ROBERTS

DAVID ROBERTS (1796-1864)

Mount Sinaï or Jabal Musa (2,285 m - 7,496ft)
Egypt

In Ascent of the Lower Range of February 18th 1839, Engraved by Louis Haghe (1806-85),
Private Collection

The mountain

The latter is mentioned many times in the Book of Exodus (and other books of the Bible) and in the Quran. According to Jewish, Christian, and Islamic tradition, the biblical Mount Sinai was the place where Moses received the Ten Commandments.

Mount Sinai is a moderately high mountain near the city of Saint Katherine in the Sinai region. It is next to Mount Katherine (at 2,629 m or 8,625 ft), the highest peak in Egypt.

The painter

David Roberts RA (24 October 1796 – 25 November 1864) was a Scottish painter.

He is especially known for a prolific series of detailed lithograph prints of Egypt and the Near East that he produced from sketches he made during long tours of the region (1838–1840). These and his large oil paintings of similar subjects made him a prominent Orientalist painter. He was elected as a Royal Academician in 1841.

At the age of 10, he was apprenticed for seven years to a house painter and decorator named Gavin Beugo, his fellow apprentice being David Ramsay Hay, who became a lifelong friend.

For the first few months of 1817, Roberts worked as the stage designer's assistant at the Pantheon Theatre, Edinburgh, a new joint venture between Bannister and an Italian musician named Corri.

In 1819, Roberts became the scene painter at the Theatre Royal in Edinburgh (having at this time James Ballantine as his apprentice) There Roberts met the Scottish actress Margaret McLachlan, said to be the illegitimate daughter of a Highland gypsy girl and a clan chief. They married in 1820, "for pure love". Although the marriage did not last long, it produced Roberts' only daughter, Christine, who was born 1821.

In 1824, he exhibited another view of Dryburgh Abbey at the British Institution and sent two works to the first exhibition of the newly formed Society of British Artists. In the autumn of 1824 he visited Normandy. His paintings based on this trip began to lay the foundation of his reputation; one of them, a view of Rouen Cathedral, sold for 80 guineas.

In 1832 he travelled in Spain and Tangiers. He returned at the end of 1833 with a supply of sketches that he elaborated into attractive and popular paintings.

J.M.W. Turner managed to persuade him to abandon scene painting and devote himself to becoming a full-time artist. Roberts set sail for Egypt on 31 August 1838, a few years after Owen Jones. His intent was to produce drawings that he could later use as the basis for the paintings and lithographs to sell to the public. Egypt was much in vogue at this time, and travellers, collectors and lovers of antiquities were keen to buy works inspired by the East or depicting the great monuments of ancient Egypt.

Roberts made a long tour in Egypt, Nubia, the Sinai, the Holy Land, Jordan and Lebanon. Throughout, he produced a vast collection of drawings and watercolour sketches.

Muhammad Ali Pasha received Roberts in Alexandria on 16 May 1839, shortly before his return to the UK. He later reproduced this scene, apparently from memory, in Volume 3 of Egypt & Nubia.

In 1851, and again in 1853, Roberts visited Italy, painting the Ducal Palace, Venice, bought by Lord Londesborough, the Interior of the Basilica of St Peters, Rome, Christmas Day, 1853, and Rome from the Convent of St Onofrio, presented to the Royal Scottish Academy.

His last volume of Illustrations, Italy, Classical, Historical and Picturesque, was published in 1859. He also executed, by command of Queen Victoria, a picture of the opening of the Great Exhibition of 1851. In. 1839 he was elected an associate and in 1841 a full member of the Royal Academy; and in 1858 he was presented with the freedom of the city of Edinburgh. The last years of his life were occupied with a series of views of London from the Thames. He had executed six of these, and was at work upon a picture of St Paul's Cathedral as seen from Ludgate Hill, when he died suddenly. He collapsed on Berners Street on the afternoon of 25 November 1864 and died at home that evening. The symptoms, described as apoplexy in most histories, were those of a stroke.