Sharing of A History of Western Art Written for Everyone (above)

In the future, I will share a book about painting and how to recognize beauty with you every week. Painting is a discipline with a long history, which includes not only "painting", but also a lot of related knowledge, such as the history of painting, the study of painting materials, knowledge of the human body, knowledge of aesthetics, the language of painting, perspective, etc. We will share some interesting books with you in the future, so that we can enjoy the beauty of nature and the beauty of the world together. In the future, we will share some interesting books with you to enjoy the beauty of nature and the beauty of human creation.

Jiang Xun, the author of "A History of Western Art Written for Everyone", takes time as the latitude line, and artists of various art genres and their representative works as the warp line, and goes back to the historical scene, starting from a flint hand axe in prehistoric times, and centering around the Mediterranean Sea, the first source of the world's Western art lineage, and taking you all the way through the mysterious Egypt, the great Greece, and the glorious Rome, up to the glorious Impressionism. ...... as well as the strange and bizarre contemporary art, reflecting on mankind's desire and creation of "beauty".

This book*** is divided into three phases, which will be shared in two parts

I: Art from Prehistory to the Early Renaissance.

One of the earliest frescoes, discovered in 1940 in the caves of Lascaux in southwestern France, is dominated by animal subjects, including bison, horses, deer, and human figures.

Why did humans paint? What was the purpose of painting these herds of bison and deer? Until today, many scholars of these Paleolithic cave paintings have been unable to explore the motives for their creation. Perhaps we can find the original starting point of human art creation.

Egypt was one of the first civilizations to develop a "style" in human art. The Egyptians used lines in a very precise way, with a mathematical rigor and a highly geometric tendency. Egyptian art style tends to a high degree of order in the establishment, no matter how complicated the content, how chaotic scene, how twisted plot, the Egyptians always seem to want to summarize them into a kind of geometric symbols, arranged in an orderly manner, placed in the rules of the space.

Egyptian art and their perception of death has a very close relationship, the Egyptians believe that after death, there is another continuation of life in the world, therefore, all the pre-birth possession, but also must be borrowed to copy the paintings and sculptures to bring to the other world to see the Egyptian art, but also most of the excavations from the tombs, he was able to reproduce four or five thousand years ago, the life of the Egyptians! The Egyptian art is also mostly from the excavation of tombs.

Around the middle of the sixth century BC, Greece produced the typical youth statue in the history of art, the Greeks called them Kouros, meaning 18 to 20 years old, perfectly developed youth. What kind of body is this, this sculpture is very relaxed, at ease, with a gentle smile on his face, the muscles of his chest still seem to rise and fall with his breath; he is completely naked, as if there is no garment more perfect than this body; he is confident, healthy and happy, step by step, from the Greece of 2,500 years ago to us.

What makes the Greek human body such a unique chapter in art history?

As we gaze at the Greek portrait carvings, we realize that the creator's concern is not the political status of the human body, whether it has power or not, or the social status of the person, whether he or she is rich or poor, noble or lowly, or even ethical or moral judgments, whether he or she is good or evil, all these are no longer important in the Greek human body carvings. The Greeks gazed at a human body, purely a "beauty" of the gaze, as if they wanted to strive to take advantage of this focused gaze, from the political and social, ethical and moral complexity, purified to a single level of beauty.

During the golden age of Greek art, the human body was given greater freedom of expression, and the experience of physical competition dominated the renewal of beauty in artistic creation. Around 450 BC, the original bronze Discus Thrower by Milon represents the dawn of the golden age of the classical period.

The great epics and dramas of the Greeks touched the deepest inner world of mankind, the fear, the restlessness, the anxiety about death, the resistance to disaster. Perhaps because of this, great masterpieces of sculpture like Laocoon were produced - a father and son being punished by the gods, with the human body entangled between giant serpents. The sadness of human nature is y touching. Meanwhile there is the Goddess of Victory and the Venus of Milo, both testifying to one of the most nostalgic and glorious pages in the history of Greek art. In many societies where the body is repressed by pedantic morality and bound by vulgar taboos, the freedom and health of the human body provided by Greek art is an aesthetic revelation worthy of serious consideration.

Roman art , Rome, although extremely admiring Greek culture, trying to learn the elegance and sublimity of the civilization of the Greek city-states, in essence, still has its own unique pragmatic, rugged, pragmatic personality traits. Thinking of Greece, often think of myths, epics, philosophy; think of Rome, perhaps more emergence of soldiers, politicians, is the establishment of national order and discipline of the spirit of the rule of law - Roman law is the basis of Western law. This pragmatic personality is reflected in the sculpture, the formation of a strong realistic style.

The Roman city has a large population, there must be a rigorous planning, in order to solve the problem of a large number of people living together, Rome's public **** baths, city square space, have set the earliest model for the formation of modern metropolis in the West. Rome's most famous public **** building, of course, is the Colosseum, this huge circular space can accommodate 50,000 people at the same time, can be said to be the ancestor of the modern city necessary dome building. Solemn and majestic, here left beasts and people fighting spots of blood, the splendor of Rome's immortality, as if still echoing in this huge circular space.

Early Christian art The very first Christ is an abstract concept, which represents life, the pursuit of beautiful things, represents the beautiful sound of the sermon, the painter initially did not know how to express the image of jealousy of the appearance, it is with the help of the Greek god of music, Orpheus play the lyre and play music expression. In art, each other regarded each other as heretical beliefs, found **** the same beautiful symbols.

But Christianity does not attach importance to the existence of the body, emphasizing abstinence, abandonment of the senses, and over time naturally to the Greek to express the beauty of the body as the main "icon" feel out of place, the Byzantine art After the emergence of the icon to find their own unique face. "The icon is the mainstay of Byzantine art. Icons existed not to evoke visual beauty, but to evoke the memory of the saints in the hearts of believers - the memory of what they said and what they did, and so icons were gradually standardized into fixed symbols.

The 1000-year-long Middle Ages developed a unique art form in the history of Western art, centered on the Christian faith. Medieval art was centered on Christianity, and art was not the ultimate goal, but the ultimate goal was to hide the evil and promote the good, and preach the doctrine. The artisans themselves were believers, and they were able to embed a sense of piety and reverence in their work, which made medieval art completely different from the outwardly expressive beauty of Greco-Roman art, but continued to show people the power of simple faith in introverted humility.

Christian faith, the pursuit of upward spiritual sublimation, the church form from Rome is upward development of the steeple, gradually formed more and more soaring dome, tower. 12 century later, Gothic architecture appeared, competing with upward development of the structure, the formation of cathedrals in the vast areas of Europe.

Gothic architecture is characterized by upward vertical structure for the purpose, first of all, the Roman round arches upward for the pointed arches, in order to consolidate the mechanical stability of the pointed arches upward, so that the pointed arches cross, constituting a "cross-ribbed arches", in order to achieve an increase in height. The more famous Gothic buildings are the Chartres Cathedral, built around 1134-1216 AD, the Church of St. Martin, built in 1387 AD, and Notre Dame, built around 1163-1250 AD.

Just shrouded in religious theocracy, the individual's pursuit of reality, the individual's carnal desires have long been suppressed, thirsting for a new kind of liberation. In Italy close to the 14th century around the time of the awakening of reason began to sprout, the formation of the great Renaissance movement.

Early Renaissance art centered on the awakening of man, replacing old theological forms with scientific visual analysis. St. Francis of Assisi, from an ordinary man, began to think about the true meaning of life because he participated in wars and saw how people live and die. He reformed the way people lived, the language they used, and their view of God and nature. God is no longer a high authority, God exists in the trees that blossom in the spring, God exists in the sound of birds chirping, God exists in the sound of gurgling water, God is everywhere, God is people's own love of life, love of beautiful things in the heart.

Francis of Assisi was canonized as St. Francis of Assisi when he preached from the commonplace and called for the awakening of people's hearts, and many painters painted frescoes with his stories, which mostly became the earliest works of art of the Renaissance.

The most famous is Giotto. Giotto, who was active in the first half of the 14th century, is known as the "father of painting", and many of his paintings depicted the story of St. Francis of Assisi. In painting the story of St. Francis of Assisi, Giotto made St. Francis of Assisi take on the body of a real human being; he was no longer a god in form, but a man of flesh and blood. Giotto made his saints, all become real flesh and blood, Giotto used the method of light and shadow, so that the human body by the contrast between light and dark, but also to produce a sense of volume and weight, Giotto also attaches importance to the depiction of the background, behind the characters of the hills, trees, meadows, there are levels, space, can also be said to be the earliest use of the Renaissance, "Perspective" method to create the picture of the The first Renaissance painter to use "perspective" to create a picture of the effect of distance and proximity.

The Renaissance art, with the awakening of man as the center of gravity, scientific visual analysis instead of the old theological forms, Giotto is the earliest to the human anatomy and the space of the perspective to deal with the problem of painting pioneers, which is also the main reason why he won the "Father of Painting" honor.

Second: The heyday of the Renaissance to the end of Rococo art before the French Revolution.

1400 in Italian, has been the era into the 1400 years after the 100 years, the phenomenon of the humanities and the arts in full bloom. These 100 years produced great statesmen, philosophers, and great works of literature and art; these 100 years inspired figures of amazing creativity such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael, who set a humanistic example for more than 400 years, laying a timeless foundation for Western artistic creation.

These 100 years are known historically as the Renaissance, which means "re-birth," as if, after the long Middle Ages, the dormant humanistic spirit had reawakened; as if, after a long, cold, and dark winter, spring had returned; and as if, after a long, long, stagnant pause and death, life had been born again, and the joy of light had returned to the world. The world is a place where the world is not a place where the world is not a place where the people are.

For a long time, birth has meant the birth of Jesus Christ, but is there any other meaning to birth? But is there any other meaning to the birth? Everyone should have a special feeling of gratitude and blessing for the birth of his or her life. At that time, the Greek myths were being translated and read again, and the celebration of the incarnation and the love of the perfect body in Greek mythology touched many artists. Although the church still had many severe restrictions and regarded the Greek gods and goddesses as heretics, the beautiful myths and stories appealed to the people's love of beauty, and the birth of the goddess Venus, the goddess of love and beauty, emerged from the waves of the sea, and the painters couldn't help but paint the beautiful scenes in the legends. Legendary beautiful scene.

Botticelli opened the prelude to the heyday of the Renaissance, his Birth of Venus to the Greek pagan myths as the subject, breaking the taboos of Christianity, boldly depicting the female nude, he wanted to give the meaning of the re-birth of the flesh.

Leonardo da Vinci is a typical genius of the Renaissance era, his talent was never just painting, he was proficient in architecture, anatomy, chemistry, fluid dynamics, he experimented with the earliest human flying machines, submarines, he designed dams, bridges, and had a unique observation of plants. Leonardo da Vinci observed everything with rational science, which broke the authority of theology and exposed the power of knowledge concrete hidden behind theology, he studied the ancient Greek human body proportions, trying to find the most perfect human form.

He evaded the ban of the Church, hid in the cemetery, and dissected 30 human bodies in an extremely scientific way, recording the difference between the veins and arteries, the different atria and chambers of the heart, the structure of the female uterus, the digestive system, the respiratory system, and even the composition of the brain with fine drawings and textual annotations. For modern anatomy, pathology, and medicine, he was a pioneer.

If Leonardo da Vinci is the peak of the Renaissance, then Michelangelo is the cutting edge of this peak. Leonardo da Vinci was calm and mysterious, leading people into a deep and quiet world, while Michelangelo was fervent and passionate, like the howling wind, like the surging sea, so that people can experience a great shock of life in his works. Michelangelo was initially known for his carvings, and at the age of twenty-three, he carved the Mourning Christ, which earned him the status of a master. At the age of twenty-six, he was commissioned by the city hall of his hometown of Florence to carve the statue of David, which represented the spirit of the city-state, and showed his attachment to the masculine beauty of the Greek male human body in a more concrete way.

When Michelangelo was about thirty years old, he was commissioned to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel for Pope Julius II at the Vatican. Mee's sculptural, three-dimensional light and shadow treatment of the human body in the painting, with its gnarled muscles and majestic physique, makes people look up like a whirlwind storm, shocking the mind. This work exploited the incredible creativity latent within him, and set a monumental example of human creativity.

Michelangelo lived to be eighty-nine years old, and his life was rich in creativity and grandeur, displaying masculine vigor and ambition. Raphael was eight years younger than Michelangelo, but he died young, at the age of 37.

He was more concerned with the problem of painting itself, and his works bring people a lot of pure visual pleasure. Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo touched the more inner heart of people, they are more like philosophers or thinkers, exposing the restlessness of life; while Raphael is pure and innocent, does not seem to have too much of life's passion for the turmoil of the personality of the mediocrity of the calm. His works are exquisite and perfect, and he established a model for the Renaissance in the formal style of the art of painting.

Venetian School ? If the Renaissance in Italy and China is a humanistic tradition established on the basis of stable industry, then Venice is a little more fantasy, a little more sensual mystery and romance, a little more realistic desire for escapism and debauchery, and a little more colorful flair.

The earliest important figure to lead out of the Venetian school of painting, should be Bellini, he learned from the northern Germanic painters Dürer, oil painting techniques, oil paintings, gloss, color, delicate texture, bring the Venetian school of painting a kind of exquisite gorgeous, and Venetian painters on the unique interest in nature, but also to make a number of religious or mythological theme of the paintings, increased the description of the landscape.

The Venetian school of painting was founded by Bellini, and by the emergence of Giorgione and Titian, it gradually established itself as the mainstay of European painting.

Venus was a favorite theme of the Venetian school, but it was usually depicted in natural landscapes, indicating that it was a god in the sky, not a woman on earth. Titian's famous "Venus of Urbino" is the first painting in the history of European art to invite the goddess into the bedroom. Under the myth of Venus, Titian no longer celebrates the goddess, but the newlywed young woman of a rich merchant's family, filled with a sweet and happy life, and the women in the painting are more "human" in terms of their enjoyment and fulfillment, and are no longer dreaming of God's emptiness. The women in the paintings are more "human" in terms of enjoyment and fulfillment, and no longer have vain dreams of God.

The Northern Renaissance, the Northern Renaissance, refers to the cultural center of Europe at the time, the region north of Italy, including the Germanic region, Belgium, Holland, and other Netherlandic regions that had not yet been founded, but also includes part of France.

The Northern Schools, especially the Flemish School in the Netherland, were particularly good at depicting the realities of life with delicate oil painting techniques. Van. Van Eyck, one of the most emblematic of these, is often cited as the earliest founder of Western painting techniques.

Boz of the Northern School was the originator of the surreal avant-garde movement in the 20th century. He sighed with compassion at the perversity and depravity of human nature, and looked at the deception and cruelty in the human heart, and the sinking of desires and greed, which provided a very different angle to view human nature.

Bruegel has some paintings similar to Bosch, also with the theme of Paradise Lost, or the fall of the angels, painting a surreal nightmare of human nature's fickleness. However, he depicted more of the common people's life on earth, such as "Peasant Wedding", where the people's festivities in the countryside with cups and bowls and hot soup carried out from the kitchen overflowed with the simplicity and truthfulness of the folk life.

The tradition of Western art, as seen in the Italian Renaissance, focused on eulogizing the Greek gods and Christian sages, and the common people were rarely the subject of painting. Bruegel not only took "man" as his subject, but also avoided the image of the aristocrat and the merchant, choosing to take as his subject the most insignificant commoner living in the land. He set an example for the commoner tradition, and also laid the groundwork for the rise of realism in the nineteenth century.

Around the fifteenth century, the center of European art was still in Italy, and the great achievements of the Renaissance filled northern artists with longing. Dürer was the first painter to paint a self-portrait, Dürer was the first to integrate the northern and southern schools of painting, Dürer was the first to sketch directly in natural landscapes, and Dürer was the first to produce a collection of works in prints.

He combined the scientific rigor of the northern school of painting with the sublime classical aesthetics of the Italian Renaissance, which led to the integration of the original regional schools of painting, and heralded the emergence of an international style of European art in the next phase.

Ornamentationism, represented by Greco and Caravaggio

Many of Greco's works are related to religion, dealing with the human body with elongated tilted lines, and the religious saints are set against the background of dark and flowing clouds, as if they were infinitely melancholic, and looked at all the suffering of the world in a compassionate way. Greco broke the Renaissance classical balance and symmetry, absorbed the diagonal tilt composition of the Venetian school of painting, strengthened the contrast between dark and light, so that the picture flashes a mysterious light, the human body is no longer like the substance of the flesh, the human body floats in the sky, more like a soul in the void.

Greco changed the Renaissance movement towards the mundane, and returned to the old medieval religion, wanting to find the power of pure devotion to faith from the innermost place of the heart.

Caravaggio only lived to be 39 years old, and during the time he lived, he mixed among the commoners, saw gambling, greed, saw the lust and cruelty of life, and saw the city folk fighting and quarrelling over the slightest trifle. Cavaggio pondered: what is "man"?

He was nostalgic for beauty, nostalgic for beautiful youthful teenagers, dressed them up as ancient Greek gods, embracing the bountiful fruits, or wearing a crown of flowers and leaves on his head, holding a musical instrument and grapes in his hands, Caramaggio in the indulgence in the present world of beautiful young youthful flesh, and at the same time also saw the degeneration of the flesh and decay, he is very skillful in the brush strokes, depicted the emptiness of the back of the youth, as those bountiful fruits on the worm moths after the beginning of corruption spots. After the insect has infested those rich fruits, the spots begin to rot. （

Caravaggio, who was fond of youth but saw corruption, fond of material things but saw human greed, fond of beauty but exposed ugliness, longing for a new life but saw death, was trapped in lust, sinned, killed, fled, and with hidden loneliness, he saw his own life's defeat, poverty, and spiritual frustration.

He sees the masters of the Renaissance, all singing the praises of success and nobility, of the David of tradition. Caravaggio's David is a handsome teenager carrying in his other hand the bloody head of a freshly cut loser, and the tragically wounded and lonely head of none other than Caravaggio himself. He subverts beauty, he embarrasses himself with ugliness, and he presents himself to the crowd in despair, not hiding his failure and misery.

Caravaggio betrays the sublime, the solemn, the beautiful. If the crowd thinks he is the successful handsome, wise and righteous David, Caravaggio smiles bitterly, then who is the failed, ugly, trollish Goliath who is insulted and spat upon by the crowd?

Caravaggio painted himself as Goliath. This is the first self-portrait in the history of Western art to appear as a betrayer, and he found a new starting point for modern Western art, toward self-analysis, self-exposure, and self-redemption.

He stood at the pinnacle of history with the arrogance of defeat and virtue, charging the ethics and morality that people take for granted, it subverted the tradition, and brought life back to the state of being dismantled, and could only see his own fragility, lust, greed, corruption and the essence of despair, and he wrote his own irredeemable sins, and instead of going to the paradise that all people aspire to, he was in tears, and went to the hell of the blazing flames all on his own.

Baroque movement, in the 16th century, the Church across Europe produced doubts that the original spirit of Christian poverty and simplicity has been distorted, with the Vatican as the center of the Church in power, become a competition for power and wealth of the interests of the group, all over the world have occurred in different forms of religious reforms, and at the same time, the folk of the rationality of the knowledge of the rise of Galileo, Copernicus and other scientists of the universe celestial research, loosened the disintegration of the Church creation of the Church. The study of the universe and celestial bodies by scientists such as Galileo and Copernicus loosened and dismantled the theological system of the Church's creation. The discovery of new shipping routes, which allowed adventurers to sail to prove that the Earth was a sphere, also led to geographical discoveries.

Throughout the seventeenth century, the old church forces tried to protect and consolidate their own interests by launching the Counter-Reformation, while on the other hand, the rational thinking of the people and the spirit of questioning began to establish a new direction of aesthetic thinking. The multiplicity of values that existed at the same time in the era of conflict between the old and the new led to a complete qualitative change in architecture, sculpture, urban landscape planning, and painting. This through the 17th century, and even continued into the 18th century European fine arts movement, known as the "Baroque" .

The name, Baroque, is universal throughout Europe, but produced different forms of Baroque in each region. Representatives include Bernini and Rubens in Italy, Velázquez in Spain, Rembrandt and Vermeer in the Netherlands

Velázquez's most famous painting, The Palace Elegance, is his as well as usual technique of utilizing the space of a mirror reflection to record a scene in which he is painting a portrait of the king's queen on the one hand, and on the other hand, depicting the incidental incident of the young princess who suddenly intrudes into the picture with her accompanying attendants.

Velázquez used multi-layered spatial vision to produce an extremely rich effect, the painter himself is painting, he is holding a palette and brush, the king, the queen, and the princess have become his models, the painter realizes that in the world of creation, he is the real king, he is no longer a royal painter subservient to the secular power, and he has found the meaning of the existence of the creator's independence and autonomy. The Courtier is an immortal masterpiece in the history of Western art, and he continues to inspire later creators, such as Picasso in the twentieth century, to find all the advanced elements of modern avant-garde creativity in this classical masterpiece.

The Netherlands in the 17th century, after a long period of Spanish colonial rule, finally succeeded in its 80-year war of independence and became an independent nation. Against this background, the Dutch Baroque did not lie in God and religion as a theme, they believed more in the power of man's own labor. Painting was no longer dependent on religion or the court; painting returned to the hearts of people in other lands and celebrated life. Painters depicted natural landscapes, portraits of citizens, and the material things that people possessed. The rise of the three categories of landscape, portrait, and still-life paintings replaced the traditional religious or historical paintings and became the greatest contribution of the Dutch School to Western art.

Rembrandt was the most typical Baroque painter of the Dutch School in the 17th century, and the most influential master of painting in Western art for nearly 300 years. His most important work, "Night Patrol", originally depicted the march of the Amsterdam militia team, the painting is huge, there are many characters, but Rembrandt broke the stagnant method of the Dutch collective portraits lined up at the time, so that the many characters in the picture staggered composition and rich visual depth of field, the picture in the center of the Cocker Captain, the left hand stretched out in front of the previous shrinkage method of painting, so that the plane of the painting space, to produce a forward marching neutrality The left hand of Captain Cork in the center of the picture is stretched forward and drawn in a foreshortened way.

Rembrandt inherited the tradition of painting self-portraits made by the Northern School of Painting. He began to record his own appearance at the age of 23, through a calm and objective method, as if he were another self inside the mirror, looking at his own youth to the prime of life, from the prime of life to the decline of life, from the youthful vigor to the old age of decrepitude. Rembrandt created nearly one hundred self-portraits in his lifetime, making it the most rigorously drawn anatomy of himself in Western art.

Rembrandt's Baroque is by no means religious and courtly vainglory, but it is the thickest method of portraying the phenomenon of life, with full-bodied enthusiasm embedded in condensed calmness, and developing from absolutely accurate realistic techniques to rich and hearty ones, he made painting to be revolutionized and subverted, and also made it to become the final salvation of his tragic life.

Vermeer did not produce many works in his lifetime, and the 30 works that have been handed down to us are not large in size, and most of the subjects are women - they are either reading, sewing, preparing their daily breakfast, or reading a letter, and they do not have any strong feelings of joy and sadness in their ordinary lives. They just live, plain and true.

The Baroque was in fact an era of pluralistic values, with Rembrandt and Vermeer, each accomplishing themselves in their own way, offering aesthetic reflections in different directions. Spanish, Belgian and Dutch Baroque, also with their own special environment, produce different aesthetic styles. Baroque is a large mainstream direction, but does not affect the unique, self-forming style of each local culture.

The 17th century Baroque era in France, the emergence of a remarkable civilian spirit of the painter Latour, Latour with extremely realistic style, depicting the life of the common people, depicting the common people harmonic quarrels, gambling, fraud or theft, he watched the human nature with a slightly mocking vision of the small trickery, bad deception, or hands pickpocketing other people's possessions, or in the game of cards, cheating, to deal with the calm and realistic writing style, but The characters' camouflaged expressions are emphasized, and the drama is full of drama.

Rococo art, the mainstream art of the court before the French Revolution, advocating the rich, gorgeous, complex decorative style. The representative painter is Watteau, he has a lot of decoration for the court, to the flesh of the ancient Greek goddesses as the subject, bright and vulgar colors, male and female love to indulge in pleasure.

And the most typical expression of Rococo's lustful beauty of pleasure should be Boucher. He painted a lot of courtesan theme paintings, mainly in the fantasy of the Oriental harem concubines, to serve men with sound and sex, nude lying on the slanting collapse, some of the Oriental silk jewelry, in a kind of illusory exotic mood, exaggerating the lust of women. His paintings, with their delicate brushwork, bright colors and provocative emotions, are typical of the Rococo style.

At the same time as the Rococo art, Chardin developed a style of painting that was completely different from the Rococo style. He took civilian life as the theme, depicting the hard-working servants in the cellar workshop, and wrote about their labor life with a calm brushwork, reminiscent of the 17th century Spain's realistic civilian tradition. The wooden barrels filled with water, the clay pots and urns waiting to be cleaned, all present the simple and real side of life. Chardin turns his attention to the kitchen and paints some subjects of wood, rice, oil and salt - a slice of cured meat, a bottle of olive oil, there are some jars of sugar, all of which emphasize the authenticity of the common people's life.

(The upper part of the book is here, the content of the book is only intercepted some representative fragments, want to know more about can go to the Internet or bookstores to buy their own, Jiang Xun's "written for everyone's history of Western art")--Changgeng Studio