Art History 100
3/2/2010
Compare/Contrast Paintings at Palmer
The Sacrifice of Jephthah’s Daughter 1650 by Pietro Vecchia is a rather unusual painting. The premise is that he must sacrifice his own daughter because of a deal with God. In the painting she has her arms across her chest covering her naked self and is bent over almost in a ball. This cowering is a stark difference to, Giovanni Baglione’s St Sebastian healed by an Angel 1603. Sebastian is in repose with his hands behind his back revealing his body. He has already been shot by an arrow where as the daughter is awaiting her father to stab her with the spear in his hand. Both characters are half naked with a cloth covering their lower bodies. Jephthah’s daughter is more ashamed of her nakedness while Sebastian seems to accept it. In biblical times the fattest goat was to be sacrificed to gain God’s favor. The heavy set nature of Jephthah’s daughter appears to be an allusion to that sacrificial procedure. St Sebastian is fit and is being healed by a female angel. The daughter is fat about to be hurt by her father Jephthah. There is a major difference between the healing angel and the overly religious father. The angel’s presence makes the viewer calm and feels like St Sebastian is going to pull through. The presence of the father is one of fear and is rather disconcerting. Even though he is embracing his child the idea that she is about to be killed by him makes him an ominous figure. These pictures seem to scream the difference between a loving God and a vengeful God.
Jan Mostaert’s Portrait of a scholar is different than the Portrait of Marie Manoni by Paulus Moreelse in a couple different ways. The first major difference is the size. The portrait of a scholar is not much bigger than a piece of paper while Marie Manoni is the size of a movie poster. This large size creates a heightened sense of importance. She is powerful, regal, and he is a commoner. One can tell that she is