DU darlings! Welcome to your Friday Afternoon Challenge. Today: “Hey, what’s Going On?”

[countryjake]

107. Thanks, CTyankee!

As you can see from my other replies, I had managed to find Mantegna's altar paintings (by just scrolling up the thread and finding pinboy's early guess on what turned out to be the Degas copy). Anyhow, after my "duh" moment, I spent a goodly amount of time Friday night (and into Sat. morning) viewing and enjoying so much of his work, drawn in by what many pages had said of his treatment of perspective and that "foreshortening" which you've mentioned, also. I like his ability to pull a person right into one of his paintings with the details and angling, but the off-color ones which almost resemble carved statues are pretty cool, too.

The stuff that has gone on thru the ages regarding so many artworks, like with that massive Jan van Eyck altar piece, doesn't surprise me at all (the desire to possess "beauty" might be in us all), but the damage done to them by conflict, despots, and wars is sad and disgusting, to put it mildly. As with the looting of Iraq, that raid on wondrous creations from the very beginnings of civilization, treasures of Mesopotamia, which we all were made aware of early on during our country's Invasion, nations never do stop to think much of the consequences of aggression.