Inspiration through the Ages

March 21st is the last day to see Raphael's La Velata in the Biggest Little City. She came to town during our discussion about the original in art, appropriation, and plagiarism. Some reoccurring thoughts on the Facebook page were how artists continually reinvent and rework their style and how one learns and how others improved their own art form by trying to replicate another artist's work. I believe this relationship of ideas is what makes us more thoughtful and challenged as artists; written, visual, and performing alike. Here is a visual Renaissance tour of our Facebook thoughts:

Everyone in Rome is seeing Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. Her pose, composition, and enigmatic expression delighted and inspired many other artists of the early 1500's. Raphael was one of them. He incorporated many of these elements into his famous La Velata (The Veil) and other portraits.

Leda and the Swan by da Vinci expressed a difficult twisted pose which Raphael borrowed in his painting of St. Catherine of Alexandria.

The following is a Raimondi engraving (1515) of a Raphael design. The three gods in the bottom right hand corner make a reappearance in a later piece, Le déjeuner sur l'herbe by Edouard Manet in 1862.