North Light Studios

It's so hard to pick sculptors. There must be a thousand Italian sculptors alone to choose from, and I'm just taking a bite out of the last few centuries with that number. During my searches, my husband suggested Vittorio Caradossi , a sculptor from Florence. He was born in 1861, died in 1918. That's about as much as I know about him, unless you count his work. Thanks to the ARC for this pic! This piece, called Shooting Stars , is an elegant piece. It's design suggests a reaching for the heavens. An amazing marble piece of two young women depicting the epitomy of graceful, stretched from their toes to their hair, which is flowing upward. Picture thanks to Portuguese Wikipedia   This sculpture is not only fun, but thought-provoking. Woman With A Mirror is a marble sculpture that is actually attached to a mirror. Another elegant and graceful pose. What I like about these statues is his use of drapery. It's very well done, rivaling Bernini's detaile...

Screeeee! This is what I sound like when I get excited. And what am I excited about, you ask? That today I'm covering one of my favorite pieces - and sculptors - of all time, Antonio Canova. I'm so tempted to put up a pic of the best first, but you know...last the best of all the game, right? Restraining myself with every fiber of my being, the first thing I will do is introduce you to Canova.   This is a self-portrait of Canova from  Wikipedia  (at first I thought, hmm, he's kind of handsome in his own right, but when I saw another less-attractive painting of him thought he must've been portraying himself in a flattering light). Canova was born in the Republic of Venice, his father died before he was three and his mother remarried and left him with his grandparents, which turned out to be a good thing, because they were loving and kind people. After Canova spent his early life studying, he got to work. When nine years had passed, he learned the art of stone car...

It seems that every year, about half-way through, I lull. There is a huge gap in my blogs from about May to the end of the year. And this year, I didn't even start until March. Is it any wonder that my email used to be slacker_a? While scrolling through favorite statuary, I came across Apollo and Daphne , and my eyes lit up. Maybe this story is so intriguing to me because I have a sister named Daphne. Or maybe the statue itself is what drew me in. Apollo, who has been hit by those tricky arrows that belong to Eros (a.k.a. Cupid), wants Daphne so badly that he won't give in to her refusals. Daphne detests Apollo, and begs her father for help in getting away from him. The way I see the story - and many others as well - is that Apollo was about to deprive Daphne of her virtue, and so her father turns her into a Laurel tree. She is still a living thing, and though not a human, has escaped Apollo's grasp. From Wikipedia This sculpture by Bernini is, in effect, enthrallin...