Irish astronomer William Parsons might have been surprised to see van Gogh’s The Starry Night appear in 1889.
He had drawn this sketch of the Whirlpool Galaxy 44 years earlier:
Art
Trompe L’Oeil
Designers wanted to put a dome on Rome’s Sant’Ignazio church, but neighbors complained of the shadow. So, instead, artist Andrea Pozzo painted this design on the flat ceiling.
When it’s viewed from the side (below), the church gets its dome after all.
Unfinished
Artist Elizabeth Shoumatoff commenced an oil portrait of Franklin Roosevelt at noon on April 12, 1945.
This is as far as she got. FDR was being served lunch when he said, “I have a terrific headache” — and collapsed of a massive cerebral hemorrhage.
But the Rent’s Great
“Corner House,” by Hungarian painter István Orosz (b. 1951).
“Illusion,” wrote Oscar Wilde, “is the first of all pleasures.”
Renaissance Surrealism
There’s no mistaking a portrait by Giuseppe Arcimboldo — the Milanese painter represented his subjects as masses of flowers, vegetables, fruits, and fish. These personifications of the four seasons were composed between 1563 and 1573.
An Early Escher
“False Perspective,” a 1754 engraving by William Hogarth.
“Whoever makes a DESIGN without the Knowledge of PERSPECTIVE,” he wrote, “will be liable to such Absurdities as are shewn in this Frontispiece.”
Unquote
“Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.” — Tom Stoppard
Occupational Handicaps
Monet lost his vision, but not his hearing.
Beethoven lost his hearing, but not his vision.
Finding the Holy Grail
There’s no chalice on the table in Leonardo’s Last Supper …
… but there is one on Bartholemew’s head (far left).
Fallow and Fertile
Albrecht Dürer’s Melencolia I might brood about thwarted creativity, but it contains one of the most brilliant magic squares in all of European art.
You can reach the sum of 34 by adding the numbers in any row, column, diagonal, or quadrant; the four center squares; the four corner squares; the four numbers clockwise from the corners; or the four counterclockwise.
As a bonus, the two numbers in the middle of the bottom row give the date of the engraving: 1514.