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Maria Magdalena (Stevens)
''Mary Magdalene'' is an oil on canvas painting by Belgians, Belgian painter Alfred Stevens (painter), Alfred Stevens. It is Stevens' revision of the Biblical figure of Mary Magdalene. The work has been in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent, Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent since 2001. The painting was ordered by the Parisian merchant Georges Petit. Painting Alfred Stevens, painter of the mundane life in Paris, met the actress Sarah Bernhardt around 1887. He made several portraits of her. In some of them she posed as a character from history or literature. In this painting we see Bernhardt as Mary Magdalene, the gospel courtesan who later converted and retired as a recluse. The long hair, the skull - the vanitas symbol par excellence - and the desolate landscape in the background are part of an iconographic tradition that goes back to the Middle Ages. Typical of the nineteenth century is the manifest sensuality and the melancholic, almost hallucinatory gaze wherewith Ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alfred Stevens (painter)
Alfred Émile Léopold Stevens (11 May 182324 August 1906) was a Belgian painter, known for his paintings of elegant modern women. In their realistic style and careful finish, his works reveal the influence of 17th-century Dutch genre painting. After gaining attention early in his career with a social realist painting depicting the plight of poor vagrants, he achieved great critical and popular success with his scenes of upper-middle class Parisian life. He tended to use the same models over and over again, and not all of them were aristocratic. "At least three of his frequent models can be identified in the infamous Book of the Courtesans, a top secret leather bound book containing the surveillance files of the Paris vice squad," writes author SummeBrennan Family background Stevens was born in Brussels. He came from a family involved with the visual arts: his older brother Joseph (1816–1892) and his son Léopold (1866–1935) were painters, while another brother Arthur (1825 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
