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500 yrs. of Women's faces thru the artist's eyes (Original Post) packman Sep 2014 OP
I find what happens around 2:10 really interesting. Donald Ian Rankin Sep 2014 #1
Was great ann--- Sep 2014 #2
I was looking for that painting too! smirkymonkey Sep 2014 #7
Seems to be subjective on the part of whoever made selections for the video. Iggo Sep 2014 #3
Good observation Warpy Sep 2014 #4
"...sixteenth century Photoshopping." Iggo Sep 2014 #6
Possibly but not probably Warpy Sep 2014 #8
Fascinating. silverweb Sep 2014 #5

Donald Ian Rankin

(13,598 posts)
1. I find what happens around 2:10 really interesting.
Sun Sep 7, 2014, 01:53 PM
Sep 2014

I'm not sure if that's a matter of changes in artistic style then, though, or just about which images were selected by the person putting this together.

 

ann---

(1,933 posts)
2. Was great
Sun Sep 7, 2014, 01:59 PM
Sep 2014

in the beginning. Toward the "modern" era of women's faces, it was horrible.

Also, wonder why woman's face in the painting "Girl with a Pearl Earring" by Johannes Vermeer wasn't there.





Iggo

(47,489 posts)
3. Seems to be subjective on the part of whoever made selections for the video.
Sun Sep 7, 2014, 02:22 PM
Sep 2014

I love women and I love women's faces. To borrow the dying words of the Last Samurai: "Perfect. They are all perfect."

But before I even got halfway through that video, I was already getting creeped out. It seemed to me like from 0-38 there was one woman, and from 38-56 there was another one, and so on.

Maybe that's the point of the video, that artists see women similarly based on the prevailing standards of beauty for their time period. Or maybe the selector chose faces that matched so they'd be easier to morph into each other. I really don't know.

Either way it did make me think on a Sunday morning, so YAY!!!

Warpy

(110,913 posts)
4. Good observation
Sun Sep 7, 2014, 02:38 PM
Sep 2014

As standards in female beauty changed, portraits of women changed. They were never the woman being painted, only parts of her that could be turned into the ideal of the day. Think of it as sixteenth century Photoshopping.

For instance, the Tudor age was characterized by chinless women, since having a chin at all was considered a sign of obstinacy. It's one way Henry VIII was conned into a political marriage with Anne of Cleves and why he rejected her as a wife. Likely she had the long Germanic face with the strong jaw, the Camilla Parker-Bowles of her era.

Around the 2:10 mark, artists started to do two things: first, they painted their peers instead of their superiors in the aristocracy; second, they started to try to paint the character of their subject rather than just the collection of parts according to the current fashion. While many of the later portraits are less photographic, they convey more of the woman than the early ones did.

Iggo

(47,489 posts)
6. "...sixteenth century Photoshopping."
Sun Sep 7, 2014, 07:23 PM
Sep 2014

That makes a lot of sense.

(Is this something that I might have learned in Art History 101?)

silverweb

(16,402 posts)
5. Fascinating.
Sun Sep 7, 2014, 03:21 PM
Sep 2014

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]I'm neither an art critic nor an artist, but I like this. The smooth flow of one face into another and one expression into another, from sad to pious to flirtatious, is very well done.

The presentation shows the range of painting styles over the centuries and some of the changes in fashion. I think it also shows the artists' subjective feelings towards feminine beauty, which seem to have been fairly consistent. It could hardly be all inclusive, but it's positively intriguing.

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