MOUNT SINAÏ PAINTED BY JEAN-LÉON GERÔME

 

JEAN-LÉON GERÔME (1824-1904)
Mount Sinaï / Jabal Musa (2,285 m - 7,496ft)
Egypt

In La fuite en Egypte , oil and tempera on panel, 1897, Musée Georges Garret, Vesoul (France)

About the painting
Jean Leon Gérome painted Mount Sinai on several occasions and often for its historical religious content as on the canvas above or in his Moses at Mount Sinai. Each time the painter added details of miraculous appearances! Here, it is an white angel who guides in a halo of light Mary and Joseph on the way of the Flight into Egypt. The description of Mount Sinai (on the bacjground) and its surroundings, seen from above (from the point of view of the Angel) adds an additional element to the strangeness of this painting.


The painter
Jean-Léon Gérôme was a French painter and sculptor in the style now known as academicism. The range of his oeuvre included historical painting, Greek mythology, Orientalism, portraits, and other subjects, bringing the academic painting tradition to an artistic climax. He is considered one of the most important painters from this academic period. He was also a teacher with a long list of students.
In 1856, he visited Egypt for the first time. Gérômes recurrent itinerary followed the classic grand tour of most occidental visitors to the Orient; up the nile to Cairo, across to Fayoum, then further up the Nile to Abu Simbel, then back to Cairo, across the Sinai Peninsula through Sinai and up the Wadi el-Araba to the Holy land, Jerusalem and finally Damascus. This would herald the start of many orientalist paintings depicting Arab religion, genre scenes and North African landscapes. In an autobiographical essay of 1878, Gérôme described how important oil sketches made on the spot were for him: "even when worn out after long marched under the bright sun, as soon as our camping spot was reached I got down to work with concentration. But Oh! How many things were left behind of which I carried only the memory away! And I prefer three touches of colour on a piece of canvas to the most vivid memory, but one had to continue on with some regret.
He did not only gather themes, artefacts and costumes for his oriental scenes, but also made oil studies from nature for their backgrounds. Several of these quick sketches are filled with details that exceed his wished for three touches of colour.
Gérôme's reputation was greatly enhanced at the Salon of 1857 by a collection of works of a more popular kind : The Duel ; After the Masked Ball (Musée Condé, Chantilly); Egyptian Recruits crossing the Desert; Memnon and Sesostris and Camels Watering.

The mountain
Mount Sinaï (2,285 m - 7,496 ft) 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.

__________________________________________

2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT SINAI / JABAL MUSA IMAGINED BY VITTORE CARPACCIO

VITTORE CARPACCIO (1465-1526) 

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

Egypt

 In The Flight Into Egypt,  1516 ,oil on panel ( 111 x 72cm), 

The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. 

About the painting 

The flight to Egypt is a  religious  subject painted by many artists from the Middle Ages to the 18th century. It relates a famous episode of the Christian sacred history of which the painters have seized all the same moment: the passage of the border (if one may say) off  the land of Herod (Israël)  to Egypt, the so called border  being materialized, on all the paintings, by the Mount Sinai, nowadays set in Egypt. Those representations are ,of course, totally imaginary. None of these painters having had the opportunity to go there ! This is all the interest of these various representations of the Flight in Egypt presented in this blog: the one by Joachim Patinir or the so expressive version by Giotto.  

In the Carpaccio's version (above), the Mount Sinai is supposed to be the first (and the highest) mountain in the background, on the left of the frame... behind the tree !

The story related is the following :  forced to flee Bethlehem with the Infant Jesus to escape King Herod who ordered the death of all the male children under two-year-old, Joseph takes the Infant Jesus and his mother the Virgin Mary and take refuge in Egypt. They will remain three and a half years in Egypt, moving several times from city to city, until the death of Herod. They then came back to Nazareth by an other way. 

Nowadays  this  route (go and return), known as "The Way of the Holy Family" is in the process of becoming a World Heritage Site by UNESCO

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 
The italian painter of  the Venetian school, Vittore Carpaccio studied under Gentile Bellini. He is best known for a cycle of nine paintings, The Legend of Saint Ursula. His style was somewhat conservative, showing little influence from the Humanist trends that transformed Italian Renaissance painting during his lifetime. He was influenced by the style of Antonello da Messina and Early Netherlandish art. For this reason, and also because so much of his best work remains in Venice, his art has been rather neglected by comparison with other Venetian contemporaries, such as Giovanni Bellini or Giorgione. In 1516, he painted a Sacra Conversatione painting in then Venetian town of Capodistria (now Koper in Slovenia), which is hanging in its Cathedral of the Assumption. Carpaccio created several more works in Capodistria, where he spent the last years of his life and also died

_______________________________

2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT SINAÏ PAINTED BY JACQUES DE LÉTIN

JACQUES DE LÉTIN (1597-1661)

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

Egypt

In Moïse au Mont Sinai, oil on canvas (210 × 232 cm), 1655, Museum of Fine Arts, Troyes, France  

The painting 
This painting as nothing to do with a représentation of Mount Sinais  / Djebal Mussa the painter ould see at this time  IN this allegoric painting Moses poses with the Tables of the Law, on which the Ten Commandments were written (in French, according to de Létin ! ).
Behind him  is representation Mount Sinai (not very realistic!)  where he received the Commandments. The building in the background is Saint Catherine's Monastery, at the foot of Mount Sinai. It is one of the oldest monasteries in the world. A beam of light falls on the monastery, through an eye in the rock on the left.

The painter 
The French painter Jacques de Létin,  also known as Jacques Ninet de Lestin was born in a relatively wealthy family,  sensitized to the artistic activity that was still unfolding in Troyes in the early seventeenth century. His father, Jehan de Létin, runs a hotel called L'Image de Saint-Christophe. During his stay in Italy, The young Jacques de Letin  met Simon Vouet, with whom he became friend.
After his death and despite his  notoriety during his lifetime, Jacques de Letin was quickly forgotten. As early as the end of the seventeenth century, art historians cite him without further comment in the list of artists attached to the style of Simon Vouet. In one of these lists, the name of Jacques de Létin was transformed into "Nicolas de Lestin "by forgetting a comma between Ninet and Lestin. More than two centuries later, it is the  historian Albert Babeau who, in 1882, found the identity and right biography of Jacques de Létin.
Many of his works disappeared during the Revolution and since 1940. One can see what remains of his works, notably in the  churches of the city o fTtroyes in France :   Saint-Pantaléon, Saint-Remi, Sainte-Madeleine and  Our Lady of Aix-en-Othe. His Apparition of the Virgin to Saint Robert is kept at the church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Chaource, and Saint-Louis dying of the plague in Tunis in the right arm of the transept of the church Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis in Paris.
But since the beginning of the twenty-first century, when the painter is better known, new works of his hand have been identified. In 2011, the Bordeaux Museum of Fine Arts acquired two paintings by Jacques de Létin representing La Grammaire and La Géométrie. The museum of fine arts of Reims, retains a Lamentation on the dead Christ painted between 1640 and 1645.

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 Sinaï. 

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 (depicted in the Jean-Léon Gérôme painting above).

Mount Sinai is a moderately high mountain near the city of Saint Katherine in the Sinai region. It is next to Mount Katherine (2,629m - 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.

_______________________________

2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT SINAÏ / JABAL MUSA BY EDWARD LEAR

 

 EDWARD LEAR (1812-1888)

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

In Arabs Approaching Mount Sinai, pencil and watercolor, 1849, (17.8 x 36.8 cm.)

Private collection (Christie's London)

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
Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet, and is known now mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limericks, a form he popularised. His principal areas of work as an artist were threefold: as a draughtsman employed to illustrate birds and animals; making coloured drawings during his journeys, which he reworked later, sometimes as plates for his travel books; as a (minor) illustrator of Alfred Tennyson's poems. As an author, he is known principally for his popular nonsense collections of poems, songs, short stories, botanical drawings, recipes, and alphabets. He also composed and published twelve musical settings of Tennyson's poetry.
Lear was already drawing "for bread and cheese" by the time he was aged 16.
In 1842, Lear began a journey into the Italian peninsula, travelling through the Lazio, Rome, Abruzzo, Molise, Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily. In personal notes, together with drawings, Lear gathered his impressions on the Italian way of life, folk traditions, and the beauty of the ancient monuments. Of particular interest in Lear was the Abruzzo, which he visited in 1843, through the Marsica (Celano, Avezzano, Alba Fucens, Trasacco) and the plateau of Cinque Miglia (Castel di Sangro and Alfedena), by an old sheep track of the shepherds.
Among his travels, he visited Greece and Egypt during 1848-49, and toured India and Ceylon during 1873–75. While travelling he produced large quantities of coloured wash drawings in a distinctive style, which he converted later in his studio into oil and watercolour paintings, as well as prints for his books. His landscape style often shows views with strong sunlight, with intense contrasts of colour. Between 1878 and 1883 Lear spent his summers on Monte Generoso, a mountain on the border between the Swiss canton of Ticino and the Italian region of Lombardy. His watercolor Mount Olympus dated 1849 in in the MET in New York City. His oil painting The Plains of Lombardy from Monte Generoso is in the Ashmolean Museum Oxford (UK).

_______________________________

2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

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. 

MOUNT SINAÏ / JABAL MUSA PAINTED BY J.M.W. TURNER

J.M.W. TURNER  (1775–1851)
Mount Sinaï / Jabal Musa (2,285 m - 7,496ft)
Egypt 

In "Mount Sinai, the valley in which the Children of Israel were encamped",
pencil, pen, ink and watercolor on paper, 12.7 x 20.2 cm.
Private collection ( Christie's London/ 06/07/2010)

About this Painting
It descibes the moment Moses have waited to receive the Ten Commandments.

The mountain
Mount Sinaï (2,285 m - 7,496 ft) 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
The english painter Joseph Mallord William Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence in the history of painting. Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting. He is commonly known as "the painter of light" and his work is regarded as a Romantic preface to Impressionism.
In his thirties, Turner travelled widely in Europe, starting with France and Switzerland in 1802 and studying in the Louvre in Paris in the same year. He made many visits to Venice. Turner's talent was recognized early in his life. Financial independence allowed Turner to innovate freely; his mature work is characterized by a chromatic palette and broadly applied atmospheric washes of paint. According to David Piper's The Illustrated History of Art, his later pictures were called "fantastic puzzles." Turner was recognized as an artistic genius: influential English art critic John Ruskin described him as the artist who could most "stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of Nature."
Turner's major venture into printmaking was the Liber Studiorum (Book of Studies), seventy prints that he worked on from 1806 to 1819. The Liber Studiorum was an expression of his intentions for landscape art. The idea was loosely based on Claude Lorrain's Liber Veritatis (Book of Truth), where Lorrain had recorded his completed paintings; a series of print copies of these drawings, by then at Devonshire House, had been a huge publishing success. Turner's plates were meant to be widely disseminated, and categorized the genre into six types: Marine, Mountainous, Pastoral, Historical, Architectural, and Elevated or Epic Pastoral. His printmaking was a major part of his output, and a museum is devoted to it, the Turner Museum in Sarasota, Florida, founded in 1974 by Douglass Montrose-Graem to house his collection of Turner prints.
Turner placed human beings in many of his paintings to indicate his affection for humanity on the one hand (note the frequent scenes of people drinking or working or walking in the foreground), but its vulnerability and vulgarity amid the 'sublime' nature of the world on the other. 'Sublime' here means awe-inspiring, savage grandeur, a natural world unmastered by man, evidence of the power of God – a theme that romanticist artists and poets were exploring in this period. Although these late paintings appear to be 'impressionistic' and therefore a forerunner of the French school, Turner was striving for expression of spirituality in the world, rather than responding primarily to optical phenomena.
Turner used pigments like carmine in his paintings, knowing that they were not long-lasting, despite the advice of contemporary experts to use more durable pigments. As a result, many of his colours have now faded greatly.
John Ruskin says in his "Notes" on Turner in March 1878 : "His true master was Dr Monro; to the practical teaching of that first patron and the wise simplicity of method of watercolour study, in which he was disciplined by him and companioned by Girtin, the healthy and constant development of the greater power is primarily to be attributed; the greatness of the power itself, it is impossible to over-estimate. "

_______________________________
2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT SINAÏ / JABAL MUSA BY EL GRECO

EL GRECO  (1540-1614) 

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

Egypt

 

1. In Mount Sinaï, oil and tempera on panel,3 7cm x 23, 8cm , 1568, The Modena Triptych (back panels)
Galleria Estense, Modena, Italy 

2. In Mount Sinaï  oil and tempera on panel, 41 x 47,5 cm., c. 1570-72, 

 Historical Museum of Crete, Iraklion

About the painting

The first painting is the central back panel of the  Modena Triptych painted is 1568 triptych (three panel painting) by the artist El Greco, who was also known as Doménikos Theotokópoulos. This portable altarpiece is painted on both sides and has an Italian Renaissance frame. The front depicts the Adoration of the Shepherds, a Christian knight being crowned by Christ in glory, and the Baptism of Jesus. The back panels show the Annunciation to Mary, Mount Sinai, and Adam and Eve. The back panel shows pilgrims on the way to the Saint Catherine's Monastery in Egypt as if on their way to Heaven.

The second painting was probably made for the antiquarian Fulvio Orsini, librarian to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, in whose palace the artist lived from 1570 to 1572. It shows the peaks of Mount Sinai, a place sacred to Judaism and Christianity, of special significance for Eastern Orthodoxy, and revered by Muslims. At the centre is Mount Horeb, where Moses received the tablets of the Ten Commandments from God. On the left is Mount Epistene. The peak on the right is St. Catherine's Mount, where the early Christian Martyr Catherine had been buried. The small citadel at the foot of Mount Horeb is the monastery that to this day bears her name.
The St. Catherine's Monastery is venerated as the spiritual home of Byzantine Orthodoxy and it was a great centre of pilgrimage. In the painting, on the left are three Western pilgrims, while on the right is a group of Eastern pilgrims with camels.
The view of the holy site is based on engravings of Mount Sinai which could be found in travel books. El Greco painted a similar view on the reverse of the Modena Triptych.

The painter 

Doménikos Theotokópoulos (Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος most widely known as El Greco ("The Greek"), was a famous Greek painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance, normally signing his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος, (Doménikos Theotokópoulos), often adding the word Κρής Krēs, Cretan.

El Greco was born in the Kingdom of Candia, which was at that time part of the Republic of Venice, and the center of Post-Byzantine art. He trained and became a master within that tradition before traveling at age 26 to Venice, as other Greek artists had done. In 1570 he moved to Rome, where he opened a workshop and executed a series of works. During his stay in Italy, El Greco enriched his style with elements of Mannerism and of the Venetian Renaissance taken from a number of great artists of the time, notably Tintoretto.

 In 1577, he moved to Toledo, Spain, where he lived and worked until his death. In Toledo, El Greco received several major commissions and produced his best-known paintings.
El Greco's dramatic and expressionistic style was met with puzzlement by his contemporaries but found appreciation in the 20th century. El Greco is regarded as a precursor of both Expressionism and Cubism, while his personality and works were a source of inspiration for poets and writers such as Rainer Maria Rilke and Nikos Kazantzakis. El Greco has been characterized by modern scholars as an artist so individual that he belongs to no conventional school.  He is best known for tortuously elongated figures and often fantastic or phantasmagorical pigmentation, marrying Byzantine traditions with those of Western painting.

El Greco painted many of his paintings on fine canvas and employed a viscous oil medium. He painted with the usual pigments of his period such as azurite, lead-tin-yellow, vermilion, madder lake, ochres and red lead, but he seldom used the expensive natural ultramarine.
El Greco regarded color as the most important and the most ungovernable element of painting, and declared that color had primacy over form. Francisco Pacheco, a painter and theoretician who visited El Greco in 1611, wrote that the painter liked "the colors crude and unmixed in great blots as a boastful display of his dexterity" and that "he believed in constant repainting and retouching in order to make the broad masses tell flat as in nature".
In his mature works El Greco demonstrated a characteristic tendency to dramatize rather than to describe.] The strong spiritual emotion transfers from painting directly to the audience. According to Pacheco, El Greco's perturbed, violent and at times seemingly careless-in-execution art was due to a studied effort to acquire a freedom of style.  El Greco's preference for exceptionally tall and slender figures and elongated compositions, which served both his expressive purposes and aesthetic principles, led him to disregard the laws of nature and elongate his compositions to ever greater extents, particularly when they were destined for altarpieces.  The anatomy of the human body becomes even more otherworldly in El Greco's mature works; for The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception El Greco asked to lengthen the altarpiece itself by another 1.5 feet (0.46 m) "because in this way the form will be perfect and not reduced, which is the worst thing that can happen to a figure'". A significant innovation of El Greco's mature works is the interweaving between form and space; a reciprocal relationship is developed between the two which completely unifies the painting surface. This interweaving would re-emerge three centuries later in the works of Cézanne and Picasso.

The mountain
Mount Sinaï (2,285 m - 7,496 ft) 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.

__________________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT SINAI / JABAL MUSA PAINTED BY JAN ASSELIJN

Jan Asselijn (c.1610 – October 1, 1652)
Mount Sinaï / Jabal Musa (2,285 m - 7,496ft)
Egypt

In Flight into Egypt, c. 1640, oil on canvas, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

 

About the painting 

Flight into Egypt used to be a very popular subject. Hundreds of canvas were painted on this subject between the 14th and 19th centuries, showing Mary with the baby on a donkey, led by Joseph, borrowing older iconography from the rare Byzantine journey to Bethlehem. Nevertheless, Joseph sometimes holds the child on his shoulders. Prior to about 1525, it was generally part of a larger cycle, whether it was the Nativity, the Life of Christ, or the Life of the Virgin. The background of these scenes generally (until the Council of Trent tightened up on such additions to the Scriptures) included a number of apocryphal miracles and provided an opportunity for the emerging genre of landscape painting.  The mountain deputed is supposed to be Mount Sinaï,  each painter giving his own vision of the sacred mountain or taking inspiration from what had already been painted in the past. The painted mountain  has generally very little to do with what Mount Sinaï really is.

The mountain
Mount Sinaï (2,285 m - 7,496 ft) 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

Asselijn was born at Dieppe from a French Huguenot family as Jean Asselin. He received instruction from Esaias van de Velde (1587–1630), and distinguished himself particularly in landscape and animal painting, though his historical works and battle pieces are also admired. He traveled in France and Italy, and modeled his style after Bamboccio (Pieter van Laer), also a member of the Bentvueghels. Nicolaes de Helt Stockade and Asselijn married two sisters in Lyons in 1645, both daughters of Houwaart Koorman of Antwerp. According to Houbraken, he heard this story from Abraham Genoels, who in turn heard it from Laurens Frank, an artist who was staying in the Koorman household with Artus Quellinus in Lyons at the time. Their marriages brought both Asselijn and Helt-Stockade back to the Netherlands after their travels. Asselijn had a withered hand and was small of stature, which gave him the nickname in France of petit Jean Hollandois, and which gave him the nickname Krabbetje (little claw) in the Bentvueghels. He seems to have befriended Rembrandt. In the etching that Rembrandt made of him, Asselijn appears in some states to be standing before an easel. His hands are not shown. Frederick de Moucheron, another Italianate landscape painter, was his pupil. He was one of the first Dutch painters who introduced a fresh and clear manner of painting landscapes in the style of Claude Lorrain, and his example was speedily followed byer artists. Asselijn's pictures were in high estimation at Amsterdam, and several of them are in the museums of that city. Twenty-four, painted in Italy, were engraved. One of his paintings, The Threatened Swan, which portrays a swan aggressively defending its nest, became a symbol of Dutch national resistance, although it is unknown if Asselijn intended it to be so.  The painting has been dated to the 1640s. It is considered to be Asselijn's most famous work  and was the Rijksmuseum's first acquisition.

__________________________________________
2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT SINAÏ / JABAL MUSA PAINTED BY EDWARD LEAR

EDWARD LEAR (1812-1888)
Mount Sinaï / Jabal Musa (2,285 m - 7,496ft)
Egypt

In View of Mount Sinai, Watercolor,with some white tempera, over pencil, on cream-colored wove paper.
(178 x 376 mm) Purchased as the gift of Mrs. Vincent Astor,  The Morgan Library & Museum

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 Sinaï.
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 (depicted in the Jean-Léon Gérôme painting above).
Mount Sinai is a moderately high mountain near the city of Saint Katherine in the Sinai region. It is next to Mount Katherine (2,629m - 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
Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet, and is known now mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limericks, a form he popularised. His principal areas of work as an artist were threefold: as a draughtsman employed to illustrate birds and animals; making coloured drawings during his journeys, which he reworked later, sometimes as plates for his travel books; as a (minor) illustrator of Alfred Tennyson's poems. As an author, he is known principally for his popular nonsense collections of poems, songs, short stories, botanical drawings, recipes, and alphabets. He also composed and published twelve musical settings of Tennyson's poetry.
Lear was already drawing "for bread and cheese" by the time he was aged 16.
In 1842, Lear began a journey into the Italian peninsula, travelling through the Lazio, Rome, Abruzzo, Molise, Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily. In personal notes, together with drawings, Lear gathered his impressions on the Italian way of life, folk traditions, and the beauty of the ancient monuments. Of particular interest in Lear was the Abruzzo, which he visited in 1843, through the Marsica (Celano, Avezzano, Alba Fucens, Trasacco) and the plateau of Cinque Miglia (Castel di Sangro and Alfedena), by an old sheep track of the shepherds.
Among his travels, he visited Greece and Egypt during 1848-49, and toured India and Ceylon during 1873–75. While travelling he produced large quantities of coloured wash drawings in a distinctive style, which he converted later in his studio into oil and watercolour paintings, as well as prints for his books. His landscape style often shows views with strong sunlight, with intense contrasts of colour. Between 1878 and 1883 Lear spent his summers on Monte Generoso, a mountain on the border between the Swiss canton of Ticino and the Italian region of Lombardy. His watercolor Mount Olympus dated 1849 in in the MET in New York City. His oil painting The Plains of Lombardy from Monte Generoso is in the Ashmolean Museum Oxford (UK).

_______________________________

2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT SINAÏ PAINTED BY JEAN-LEON GERÔME

JEAN-LEON GERÔME  (1824-1904) 

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

Egypt

 In Moïse au Mont Sinaï (Moses in Mount Sinaï), oil on canvas, 1895-1900, Private collection 

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 Sinaï. 

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 (depicted in the Jean-Léon Gérôme painting above).

Mount Sinai is a moderately high mountain near the city of Saint Katherine in the Sinai region. It is next to Mount Katherine (2,629m - 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 

Jean-Léon Gérôme  was a French painter and sculptor in the style now known as academicism. The range of his oeuvre included historical painting, Greek mythology, Orientalism, portraits, and other subjects, bringing the academic painting tradition to an artistic climax. He is considered one of the most important painters from this academic period. He was also a teacher with a long list of students.
In 1856, he visited Egypt for the first time. Gérômes recurrent itinerary followed the classic grand tour of most occidental visitors to the Orient; up the nile to Cairo, across to Fayoum, then further up the Nile to Abu Simbel, then back to Cairo, across the Sinai Peninsula through Sinai and up the Wadi el-Araba to the Holy land, Jerusalem and finally Damascus. This would herald the start of many orientalist paintings depicting Arab religion, genre scenes and North African landscapes. In an autobiographical essay of 1878, Gérôme described how important oil sketches made on the spot were for him: "even when worn out after long marched under the bright sun, as soon as our camping spot was reached I got down to work with concentration. But Oh! How many things were left behind of which I carried only the memory away! And I prefer three touches of colour on a piece of canvas to the most vivid memory, but one had to continue on with some regret.
He did not only gather themes, artefacts and costumes for his oriental scenes, but also made oil studies from nature for their backgrounds. Several of these quick sketches are filled with details that exceed his wished for three touches of colour.
Gérôme's reputation was greatly enhanced at the Salon of 1857 by a collection of works of a more popular kind : The Duel ; After the Masked Ball (Musée Condé, Chantilly);  Egyptian Recruits crossing the Desert;  Memnon and Sesostris and Camels Watering.

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 

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 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. 

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 

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.

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 

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 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.

MOUNT SINAÏ/ JABAL MUSA IMAGINED BY FRA ANGELICO

 

FRA ANGELICO (1395-1455)
Mount Sinaï / Jabal Musa (2,285 m - 7,496ft)
Egypt

In Fuga in egitto, 1450, toile 38,5x37cm, Museo di San Marco, Firenze, 

 

The painter
Fra Angelico (born Guido di Pietro) was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance, described by Vasari in his Lives of the Artists as having "a rare and perfect talent".  He earned his reputation primarily for the series of frescoes he made for his own friary, San Marco, in Florence. He was known to contemporaries as Fra Giovanni da Fiesole (Brother John of Fiesole) and Fra Giovanni Angelico (Angelic Brother John). In modern Italian he is called Beato Angelico (Blessed Angelic One);  the common English name Fra Angelico means the "Angelic friar".
In 1982, Pope John Paul II proclaimed his beatification in recognition of the holiness of his life, thereby making the title of "Blessed" official.  Fiesole is sometimes misinterpreted as being part of his formal name, but it was merely the name of the town where he took his vows as a Dominican friar,  and was used by contemporaries to separate him from others who were also known as Fra Giovanni. He is listed in the Roman Martyrology as Beatus Ioannes Faesulanus, cognomento Angelicus—"Blessed Giovanni of Fiesole, surnamed 'the Angelic' ".
Vasari wrote of Fra Angelico that "it is impossible to bestow too much praise on this holy father, who was so humble and modest in all that he did and said and whose pictures were painted with such facility and piety."

 

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 Sinaï. 

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 (depicted in the Jean-Léon Gérôme painting above).

Mount Sinai is a moderately high mountain near the city of Saint Katherine in the Sinai region. It is next to Mount Katherine (2,629m - 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.
___________________________________________

2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT SINAÏ -JABAL MUSA PAINTED BY GIOTTO

GIOTTO (1266-1337)
Mount Sinaï or Jabal Musa (2,285 m - 7,496ft)
Egypt

In The flight into Egypt, fresco, Basilica inferiore di Assisi, 1308-10

 

About this work
The right transept of the Lower Basilica of Assisi has numerous frescoes by important fourteenth-century authors. On the large barrel vault there are the Stories of Christ's Childhood and the Crucifixion with Franciscan Saints by Giotto and collaborators, dated 1308-1311. The image depicts the scene of the Flight into Egypt already apunted by Giotto few years before in the interior frescoes of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, also known as the Arena Chapel. Inetrestirng to have a look at the differencies.

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 Sinaï.
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 (depicted in the Jean-Léon Gérôme painting above).
Mount Sinai is a moderately high mountain near the city of Saint Katherine in the Sinai region. It is next to Mount Katherine (2,629m - 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.

_______________________________

2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

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 

Mount Sinaï (2,285 m - 7,496 ft) 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. It is the reason it is a Sacred mountain for Jewish and Christian. 

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