In this 10 minute video, BEAUTY, director Rino Stefano Tagliafierro takes 116 classic romantic paintings (all of which are listed at the end of this post) and slowly and subtly animates them, bringing the beauty in them to life. A slight tilt of the head, a dress raising ever so gently, petals falling from flowers - tiny, almost imperceptible movements, are expertly executed without changing the general composition or color of the original painting.
William Adolphe Bouguereau's original painting of The Nut Gatherers compared to a screen grab of the subtle animation. Note the arms, hands and grapes on the figure on the right:
The Manifesto: The Enigma of Beauty
«Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,
And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood;»
(W. Shakespeare, Sonnet no. 19)
Over Beauty, there has always hung the cloud of destiny and all-devouring time.
Beauty has been invoked, re-figured and described since antiquity as a fleeting moment of happiness and the inexhaustible fullness of life, doomed from the start to a redemptive yet tragic end.
In this interpretation by Rino Stefano Tagliafierro, this beauty is brought back to the expressive force of gestures that he springs from the immobility of canvas, animating a sentiment lost to the fixedness masterpieces.
Its as though these images which the history of art has consigned to us as frozen movement can today come back to life thanks to the fire of digital invention.
A series of well selected images from the tradition of pictorial beauty are appropriated, (from the renaissance to the symbolism of the late 1800s, through Mannerism, Pastoralism, Romanticism and Neo-classicism) with the intention of retracing the sentiment beneath the veil of appearance.
An inspiration that returns to us the sense of one fallen, and the existential brevity that the author interprets as tragic dignity, with an unenchanted eye able to capture the profoundest sense of the image.
Beauty in this interpretation is the silent companion of Life , inexorably leading from the smile of the baby, through erotic ecstasies to the grimaces of pain that close a cycle destined to repeat ad infinitum.
They are, from the inception of a romantic sunrise in which big black birds fly to the final sunset beyond gothic ruins that complete the piece, a work of fleeting time. - Giuliano Corti (english translation: Thomas McEvoy)
The short film:
The paintings, in order of appearance:
Asher Brown Durand - The Catskill Valley
Thomas Hill - Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe
Albert Bierstadt - Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains
Ivan Shishkin - Forest edge
James Sant - Frau und Tochter
William Adolphe Bouguereau - L'Innocence
William Adolphe Bouguereau - Song of the Angels
Ivan Shishkin - Bach im Birkenwald
William Adolphe Bouguereau - Le Baiser
William Adolphe Bouguereau - Nature's Fan- Girl with a Child
William Adolphe Bouguereau - The Motherland
Ivan Shishkin - Morning in a Pine Forest
William Adolphe Bouguereau - The Nut Gatherers
William Adolphe Bouguereau - Two Sisters
William Adolphe Bouguereau - Not too Much to Carry
Thomas Cole - The Course of Empire: Desolation
Martinus Rørbye - Entrance to an Inn in the Praestegarden at Hillested
William Adolphe Bouguereau - Sewing
William Adolphe Bouguereau - The Difficult Lesson
William Adolphe Bouguereau - The Curtsey
William Adolphe Bouguereau - Little Girl with a Bouquet
Claude Lorrain - Pastoral Landscape
William Adolphe Bouguereau - Cupidon
William Adolphe Bouguereau - Admiration
William Adolphe Bouguereau - A Young Girl Defending Herself Against Eros
William Adolphe Bouguereau - Dawn
William Adolphe Bouguereau - L'Amour et Psych
William Adolphe Bouguereau - Spring Breeze
William Adolphe Bouguereau - The Invation
William Adolphe Bouguereau - Nymphs and Satyr
William Adolphe Bouguereau - The Youth of Bacchus
William Adolphe Bouguereau - The Birth of Venus
William Adolphe Bouguereau - The Nymphaeum
Gioacchino Pagliei - Le Naiadi
Luis Ricardo Falero - Faust's Dream
Luis Ricardo Falero - Reclining Nude
Jules Joseph Lefebvre - La Cigale
John William Godward - Tarot of Delphi
Jan van Huysum - Bouquet of Flowers in an Urn
Adrien Henri Tanoux - Salammbo
Guillaume Seignac - Reclining Nude
Tiziano - Venere di Urbino
Louis Jean François Lagrenée - Amor and Psyche
Correggio - Giove e Io
François Gérard - Psyché et l'Amour
John William Godward - Contemplatio
John William Godward - Far Away Thought
John William Godward - An Auburn Beauty
William Adolphe Bouguereau - Flora And Zephy
Louis Jean François Lagrenée - Amor and Psyche
Fritz Zuber-Bühle - A Reclining Beauty
Paul Peel - The Rest
Guillaume Seignac - L'Abandon
Victor Karlovich Shtemberg - Nu à la peau de bete
Pierre Auguste Cot - Portrait Of Young Woman
Ivan Shishkin - Mast Tree Grove
Ivan Shishkin - Rain in an oak forest
William Adolphe Bouguereau - Biblis
William Adolphe Bouguereau - Elegy
Marcus Stone - Loves Daydream End
William Adolphe Bouguereau - Head Of A Young Girl
Hugues Merle - Mary Magdalene in the Cave
Andrea Vaccaro - Sant'Agata
Jacques-Luois David - Accademia (o Patroclo)
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - San Giovanni Battista
Roberto Ferri - In Nomine Deus
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - Cristo alla colonna
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - Incoronazione di spine
Paul Delaroche - L'Exécution de lady Jane Grey en la tour de Londres, l'an 1554
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - Decollazione di San Giovanni Battista
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - Sacrificio di Isacco
Guido Reni - Davide e Golia
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - Giuditta e Oloferne
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - Davide e Golia
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - Salomè con la testa del Battista
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - Davide con la testa di Golia
Jakub Schikaneder - All Soul's Day
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - San Gerolamo scrivente
Guido Reni - San Gerolamo
Pieter Claesz - Vanitas
Gabriel von Max - The Ecstatic Virgin Anna Katharina Emmerich
William Adolphe Bouguereau - Portrait of Miss Elizabeth Gardner
Jan Lievens - A young girl
Johannes Vermeer - Portrait of a Young Girl
Luis Ricardo Falero - Moonlit Beauties
Joseph Rebell - Burrasca al chiaro di luna nel golfo di Napoli
Luis Ricardo Falero - Witches going to their Sabbath
William Adolphe Bouguereau - Dante And Virgil In Hell
Théodore Géricault - Cheval arabe gris-blanc
Peter Paul Rubens - Satiro
Felice Boselli - Skinned Head of a Young Bull
Gabriel Cornelius von Max - Monkeys as Judges of Art
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - Medusa
Luca Giordano - San Michele
Théodore Géricault - Study of Feet and Hands
Peter Paul Rubens - Saturn Devouring His Son
Ilya Repin - Ivan il Terribile e suo figlio Ivan
Franz von Stuck - Lucifero Moderno
Gustave Doré - Enigma
Arnold Böcklin - Die Toteninsel (III)
Sophie Gengembre Anderson - Elaine
John Everett Millais - Ophelia
Paul Delaroche - Jeune Martyre
Herbert Draper - The Lament for Icarus
Martin Johnson Heade - Twilight on the St. Johns River
Gabriel Cornelius von Max - Der Anatom
Enrique Simonet - Anatomía del corazón
Thomas Eakins - Portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross (The Gross Clinic)
Rembrandt - Lezione di anatomia del dottor Tulp
Peter Paul Rubens - Die Beweinung Christi
Paul Hippolyte Delaroche - Die Frau des Künstlers Louise Vernet auf ihrem Totenbett
Elizabeth Jane Gardner Bouguereau - Too Imprudent
William-Adolphe Bouguereau - The Prayer
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - Amorino dormiente
Augustin Théodule Ribot - St. Vincent (of Saragossa)
Caspar David Friedrich - Abtei im eichwald
CREDITS
DIRECTOR: RINO STEFANO TAGLIAFIERRO
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: LAILA SONSINO
2ND ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: CARLOTTA BALESTRIERI
EDITING - COMPOSITING - ANIMATION: RINO STEFANO TAGLIAFIERRO
MUSIC & SOUND DESIGN: ENRICO ASCOLI
ART DIRECTION: RINO STEFANO TAGLIAFIERRO
HISTORIOGRAPHER: GIULIANO CORTI
