In 1640, Nicolas Poussin returned to Parisa and completed the large classicism painting Jesus Christ Formed the Eucharist for the palace of Louis XIII, the ceiling painting Time and Truth for the prime minister Richelieu’s luxury residence. And he also made many altar paintings for some churches, at the same time, when making the large murals, he made some frontispiece patterns and decorative patterns for the Bible printed by the court’s library, Virgil’s and Horace’s collection of poems. These trivial painting stuffs occupied much of his time of free thought, especially when he was appointed as the commander of decoration engineering of Le Louvre Museum. He had to deal with many design chores.

But the Nicolas Poussin still finished these tasks with great patience. At this time, the palace’s another painter Simon Vouet was incompatible with him. He felt very tired. In 1642, he returned to Rome to visit his wife and left France. The following year, Louis XIII died, the French became more unrest. He was more determined to settle in Italy. Holy Family On The Steps was a religious masterpiece for the subscriber after his return and reunion with his family in Rome.

Holy Family on the Steps was made between

85x121cm. Now it is collected in Le Louvre Museum of Paris. Holy Family on the Steps almost did not like a traditional religious painting and seemed to be subject to the consideration for the composition in the processing of the virgin, the son of God, Santa and the Baptist John. In this Nicolas Poussin painting, the painter was most concerned about the normative feature: the stable triangle structure, the virgin’s red dress and blue skirt, Santa’s yellow robe and St John’s black robe on the right side formed the striking contrast in color with a solemn aesthetic value. The character was so reserved, like a stage play. The background also used the ancient Rome buildings. The whole painting lacked of the religious meaning, and did not possess Raphael’s family fun. It gave a sense of harmony and symmetry and the dedication of the classical standard that the painter had been devoted to.

St Joseph the Carpenter was made by Georges De La Tour made between 1632 and 1634. This was a classical painting, measuring 137 x 101 cm, which is now preserved in Le Louvre Museum in Paris. St Joseph the Carpenter was one of the masterpieces in La Tour’s artistic mature period, which was called the masterpiece in 17th century.

From the middle of the 17th century, the people who were against religious reformation extremely worshiped Joseph and positioned Jesus’s secular father in the second only following the virgin Maria. La Tour painted Joseph with a strong body, which was very exact. He bent over and big hands tightly held the tools. His muscles bulged and beads of perspiration

width=”470″] St Joseph The Carpenter 1640[/caption]

The Parnassus: Mars and Venus measured 159x192cm, which is collected in Louvre Museum in Paris. At the age of 30, Andrea Mantegna moved to Verona and became the dominant person in the art world of this area. He spent his rest time here. The Parnassus: Mars and Venus was made when Mantegna was 65 years old.

In this mythological painting, the Parnassus was where the goddess led by Apollo lived. The sun god Apollo not only dominated the light but also the art. He himself was the god of music. It was said that soon after Hermes was born, Hermes had to submit the turtle guitar made by himself to Apollo to compensate the sin of stealing the cattle. Zeus discovered that Apollo was able to play the piano, and he made his 9 god Muse to Apollo. They lived in the Parnassus, singing and dancing all day. Then Parnassus became the birthplace of literature and art.

This High Renaissance painting took the nature as the environment to describe the joyful life of these gods’ singing and dancing. The king of gods—Zeus and Juno were in the upper part of the painting and the little cupid holding the bow with the left hand and the smelting god Wahl beside the cave echoed with each other. On the lower corner, Apollo was embracing the harp and dancing for the goddess Muse. And on the right, the one who was accompanying with the horse and wearing a pair of boots with wings was god Hermes. He held the stick of peace and approached without casting a shadow and leaving a trace. The gods in the painting were Zeus’s children so as to constitute the protoss with Zeus as the main body. The painter just took advantage of the mythological subjects and rich colors to depict the joyful scenes of the natural beauty, the beauty of human body and the earth.

In 1460, Andrea Mantegna moved to Manchester and acted as the court painter. The castle where he drew Ceiling of the Camera Picta or Camera degli Sposi was in honor of Gonzaga family. Many figures paintings on the wall looked like the continuity of the indoor space. At the same time, a balcony was painted in the ceiling and the people on the balcony overlooked the indoors under the vast sky. This was the first illusory decorative painting with the full Sotto in Su during Renaissance.

This idea had not been explored before Raphael and Correggio and had undergone the full development until the Baroque ear. When people watched the wedding hall’s walls, looked from the ground to the roof, they naturally saw the blue sky from the hole of the roof. A ring of railings where eight angels and a peacock leaned on was around the hole. The women stood besides the bucket and smilingly looked down from the railing.

This wonderful perspective painting of Mantegna was a typical example of creating the perfect building hallucinations. The complete combination of the painting itself and the building in perspective reached the effect of mixing the spurious with the genuine. The ceiling of the wedding chapel’s dome was closed, but through Mantegna’s superb skills and the effect of character’s building elevation perspective, this vault was like the open sunroof. The painter painted the architectural details like the real objects, whether they were the solid wood, or the planar pattern. We can feel, the painter wanted to create a unified sense of space and unite the roof and pictures on the wall. Without a doubt, Mantegna’s talent was truly outstanding.

The Feast Of The Gods was the last masterpiece in Bellini’s life, especially painting on canvas, because the most of previous works he painted were on the board. From the late work of The Feast Of The Gods, although it was planed by Titian, it was completed by Bellini, which proved that he also had the flexibility and creativity when he was over 80 years old. Painting on the board needed the careful control of painting, so his skills made him create very exquisite paintings on the canvas. This colorful and rich painting was based on the poem in Ovid’s Feast, describing in a feast of Dionysus, Priapus became a laughing stock because of misconduct in the feast.

The body’s tone, bright silk as well as the pebbles in the prospect showed by this Renaissance painting all proved that Bellini painting technique was very sensitive. On the right side, a fairy Lotis was lying there. And there was a half-man and half-beast god on the left. They accompanied the gods to make a donkey for sacrifice. Priapus was unable to control the sexual temptation, so he lifted the fairy Lotis’s skirt up. But the donkey’s shout made his attempt failed and make a fool of him in public. All gods became very pleased because of this scandal. This episode fully expressed the elegant and nifty customs during Renaissance.

The main gods in this Renaissance painting were from the left: Silenus, Bacchus, Faunus, Mercury, Jupiter (an unknown goddess, holding a marriage fruit), Pan, Nepturne, Ceres, Apollo, Priapus, and Lotis.

In The Gray Tree, Piet Mondrian made Van Gogh’s description, Fauvism color non-description as well as the linear patterns of French new art movement blended into an original work with strong sense of form and modeling structure.

by Piet Mondrian[/caption]

Edgar Degas’s keen intellect made him aware of a new artistic flow, which was “realism art”. But this theory advocated abandoning the Greek ideal of beauty, and replaced it

with the performance of simple and sincere things. In order to get close to the beautiful ideals and not separate from the reality,

Degas’s creative approach was to use the clean lines and light and dark skills. If you want to describe the reality, you must make the technique obedient to the uniqueness of image. The portraits of Degas youth accurately showed his faith, excellent skills, exquisite feeling and conventional standards for the sketches. For example, The Belleli Family depicted the painter’s aunt and two cousins. The painting’s large frame and complicated subject were easy for people to consider the heaviness of completing this task.

This was a realistic scene. But here the artist failed to show a sense of space, and the fine sketch did not show the sense of volume. And the harmonious and gentle colors (blue, white and black) did not reach the tone effect. The painter focused all the attention on the depiction of characters. The characters seemed not to make the posture, but we were unable to say the painter seize them quickly. This portrait painting showed the good education of the aristocratic families, legal obedience (so is the painter), insufferable arrogance and defiance. The painter’s aunt was portrayed meticulously. For the painter, this could replace the beauty, but it lacked the life force. All the characters were mainly to arouse a profound respect as similar as the excellent sketch in the whole painting as in Degas’s mind. This profound respect was so strong that it did not leave any space for the artistic appeal.

The Dancing Class was created between 1873 and 1876. This painting was preserved in Orsay Museum in Paris. After painting many portraits of young people and history paintings, Edvard Degas began to contact the earliest modern themes in paintings including horses and actresses. These themes were often shown in Degas paintings and sculptures. Out of interest in the

width=”447″] The Dancing Class 1874[/caption]

In the painting of Dance of Life, the painter Edvard Munch depicted a group of dancing people in the riverside grass. Three feminine images occupied the main position in this Expressionism painting and they respectively represented three different stages of woman’s career. On the left, the one dressed in white was a virgin with smile in her ruddy cheek, like the flowers in full bloom in her chest. The dress’s white symbolized the purity of the girl. And the right woman image made the contrast with the above girl. Her hands were blended and her face looked sad, which seemed to very lonely. Her dark dress was a symbol of her inner darkness and sadness. The two women images were facing the drunken dancing man and woman in the middle of the painting. symbolized the more wretched life. A full moon hanging in the sky (maybe the sun) reflected the long and wide shadow in the water, like a ghost’s eyes. This was a symbol of male. This motif in others Munch paintings more clearly showed its symbolic meaning.

In this group women trilogy in Dance of Life by Munch, the clear meaning was strengthened through the symbolic imagery and color. The theme, form and symbolic connotation were coordinated and united here, indicating that from the girl’s innocence, and then a woman’s maturity, and to the disillusioned road of life after the lost youth.

Edvard Munch was born in a noble family in Lorton Norway. Munch’s father was a doctor and also a devout Christian. He often went to treat the poor with the very low income. Munch’s mother died when Munch was 5 years old because of lung disease. When he was 15 years old, his sister Sophia also died of lung disease. When Munch became an adult, his father and a brother died. This series of family misfortunes left a deep black scar to Munch’s heart. At the age of 16, Munch was ordered by his father to enter the technical school to study engineering. But he loved painting and often went to the countryside for sketch. Later he was encouraged by his aunt to enroll Oslo Art School and was taught by Norway artist Krueger. Munch was greatly influenced by him. In 1884, Munch got acquainted with Oslo modern school artists. In the following year, he won the national scholarship to study in France. When he arrived in Paris, Munch was attracted by the impressionist paintings and admired Manet. He took debauchery and deviant lifestyle to oppose the bourgeois morality and advocate free and enthusiastic pursuit of sex. Munch was influenced by the group and he once loved a woman who was 20 years older than him. The Sick Child which was made between 1885 and 1886 was a memory for his family suffering in his childhood.

The Sick Child by Edvard Munch depicted the scene when his 15-year-old sister Sophia suffered from the disease. The lung disease took her life and she was thin and pale. But we could see her childish temperament from her. This indelible impression deeply buried in the memory of Munch. The painting used the fierce and casual colors, like a draft. And the color tone of the painting was gloomy with the dense tragic atmosphere. When it was shown at the Norway national annual exhibition, it was attacked by conservatives. Munch had to change with the academic skills, and then drew a variant painting to rename Spring. And this painting won the national scholarship. In June 1889, he had to study in Paris. The Sick Child became the starting symbol of his personal style.