16th Century Painting Depicts Historical Connection

In Portugal’s capital city, Lisbon, a painting from the 16th century offers an early depiction of the connection between Blacks and Jews. The anonymous artist captured a typical scene in the busy port city, but careful examination by an art curator in Baltimore revealed an overlooked instance showing the connection between the races, writes the Jewish Daily Forward.



Joaneath Spicer, the James A. Murnaghan curator of Renaissance and Baroque Art at the Walters Art Museum, was working on a catalog for “Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe” exhibit, when she noticed the heavy presence of Jews in the painting. The photo shows two Jewish policemen seemingly hauling off an African man to jail.

“I was really unaware of the presence of so many Jews in this painting until I began to blow up details of a photo in preparation for installing the work,” shared Spicer. “This is the only image I know of — certainly painting from this period that purports to show Jews from life.”

Blacks and Jews lived in joined neighborhoods near the port, which at the time was considered the poor part of the city. Jews held African slaves in some homes, but were said to treat their servants with respect. Additionally, as written in the Forward piece, children of African slaves were born free and rose to prominence in the coastal European country.

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To learn more about an amazing fine art exhibition, please visit Love Unlimited Film Festival and Art Exhibition.

Thermocromic Furniture Changes Color Upon Touch

If you're looking to add some fun into the decor of your home, why not play off of things you used to enjoy as a child? We have seen this trend take off with chalkboard paint and now we have found some thermochromic furniture that reminds us of those cool t-shirts we loved as kids.



This 'Linger a little longer' table and bench are made from solid European oak and have a special black finish. When your guests come into contact with the surface, its dark paint temporarily becomes transparent in response to heat, revealing the oak underneath.

The table and bench are designed in the UK by Jay Watson Design and are available for £1,850 or about $2419.06.

But, if you can't afford the price tag and want "thermochromic" in your home in smaller ways, check out this pot that changes colors as it gets hot, or this great "morning mug" that goes from a black sleepy face to a white awake face when hot.

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To learn more about an amazing fine art exhibition, please visit Love Unlimited Film Festival and Art Exhibition.

3D Painting Transforms Drawings into Sculptures

If sticking drawings to a fridge won't do, parents of pint-sized Picassos can put their child's art on a pedestal by having it 3D printed through a new service called CrayonCreatures.

The service is the invention of Bernat Cuni, a Spanish designer working in Barcelona with a focus on emerging 3D printing applications. "The idea came one morning when my daughter asked me to make one of her drawings as a toy with my DIY 3D printer, and I did it," says Cuni. "She was totally satisfied with a monochrome plastic version of her drawing, but I wasn't. I felt that something was lost in the translation from drawing to thing. That was the colour, the scratches of crayon that make a child's drawing so unique and expressiveness were lost.

Cuni revised the process to add full-colour printouts, and in turn, launched CrayonCreatures to help others do the same. The system is simple: The drawings of a diminutive Degas are scanned, interpreted by an artist at CrayonCreatures, and a full-colour print is produced on a ZCorp 3D printer, then shipped to the designer. It's similar to Child's Own, the drawing-to-plushie service, but uses the actual drawn details from the original artwork in the prints.

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To learn more about an amazing fine art exhibition, please visit Love Unlimited Film Festival and Art Exhibition.

"Lost" Titian Painting Surfaces on National Gallery

"How can it be that buried in the bowels of the National Gallery there is a Titian?" museum director Nicholas Penny recently told Jonathan Jones at the Guardian. 

The National Gallery has owned a portrait of doctor Girolamo Fracastoro since 1924, but has only now declared the famous 16th century Venetian painter the author of the detailed portrayal. The painting was misread for nearly a century because it wasn't attributed to a big name artist, and was then left to the dark depths of the museum where lesser works sometimes live.

Yet this unloved Titian received a second chance at glory thanks to art historian Paul Joannides, who brought the work to a lab for restoration. According to the Guardian, it was the detail in Fracastoro's lynx fur stole that truly captivated the National Gallery staff, with the detail and sensuality that set Titian apart. The newly attributed work can now be reunited with 12 other Titian paintings, strengthening one of the strongest collections in the world.

And now for the bad news. The casanova Renaissance painter may have suffered from a most unpleasant sexually transmitted disease. Fracastoro initially gave "syphilis" the title we know today, and the doctor is known to accept paintings from famed artists in return for medical treatment. Could it be that the sensual painter with a passion for flesh suffered from a STD?

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To learn more about an amazing fine art exhibition, please visit Love Unlimited Film Festival and Art Exhibition.

Painting the Nature

 
It looks like brushstrokes - it could almost be a Turner - but this is actually nature at its most dramatic. This snapshot from the European Space Agency's MERIS satellite shows the Tibesti mountains that straddle northern Chad and southern Libya - though a picture like this makes it easy to forget that borders exist.

The mountains, in blue and black at the centre, are a range of volcanoes. The grey and black peak in the bottom right is Emi Koussi, the tallest mountain in Chad at 3415 metres high. There aren't any recorded instances of any of the Tibesti volcanoes erupting, though Toussid‚, the black spot on the far left, does have a reputation for spewing gases and creating hot springs in its crater floor. The white regions are accumulations of carbonate salts, while the orange is desert.

For all their beauty from overhead, plant life is sparse on these mountains, known locally as the "Mountains of Hunger" because they feed so few people. The semi-nomadic Toubou people inhabit the region as salt miners and date and grain farmers, while some cheetahs, gazelles and sheep do roam the region.

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To learn more about an amazing fine art exhibition, please visit Love Unlimited Film Festival and Art Exhibition.

Great Pyramid at Giza Painting Debuts for Auction

David Hockney, “Great Pyramid at Giza with Broken Head from Thebes,” 1963. 
(Courtesy Christie’s)

David Hockney, everyone’s favorite cigarette enthusiast, will see his 1963 painting, Great Pyramid at Giza with Broken Head from Thebes, appear at auction for the first time ever at the postwar and contemporary sale this February at Christie’s London.

The painting, pictured here, was inspired by Mr. Hockney’s first trip to Egypt at the age of 26. It has been part of “an important British collection” for 40 years. It’s estimated at £2.5 million to £3.5 million ($4.1 million to $5.7 million).

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To learn more about an amazing fine art exhibition, please visit Love Unlimited Film Festival and Art Exhibition.

Butter Sculpture Unveiled at Pennsylvania Farm Show

HARRISBURG — About 18 years ago, sculptor Jim Victor got a phone call from his brother about a rather unusual newspaper advertisement.

The Pennsylvania Farm Show was looking for someone to construct its famed butter sculpture. 

Victor, who had made life-sized chocolate replicas of movie stars Mickey Rooney and Ann Miller, turned out to be the perfect man for the job.



The Farm Show has turned to Victor, the Conshohocken artist, more than 10 times since to create a signature piece of artwork that thousands will study up close starting Saturday. That’s when the eight-day Pennsylvania Farm Show will fully open to the public.

“I like to hear people’s opinions,” Victor said of blending into the crowds at the Farm Show, which is in its 97th year. “Sometimes, it’s good to be a fly on the wall.”

The butter sculpture was unveiled in a brief ceremony Thursday night that marked the unofficial opening of the Farm Show at the Farm Show Complex and Expo Center here. It is made from nearly 1,000 pounds of butter and required more than 300 hours to make. Victor’s wife, Marie Pelton, and another sculptor, Jimm Scannell, were also part of the project.

This year, the sculpture incorporated a theme of PA Preferred, the official brand of agriculture products grown or made in the state.

The sculpture featured several intricate parts, including a wheel of cheese, fruit and a milk container. Other detailed pieces were a carved turkey, a truck pulling a bed of logs and a man setting an ornament on top of a Christmas tree.

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To learn more about an amazing fine art exhibition, please visit Love Unlimited Film Festival and Art Exhibition.