Crucifixion by the Romans - Vasily Vereshchagin

 Salvete Omnes,

Good Friday - the day of Crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ

Vasily Vereshchagin (1842-1904) - painted this powerful work.

 

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and Pieta by William Adolphe Bourguereau

James Tissot - 

Do watch Mel Gibson's 'The Passion of the Christ' this weekend if you are a Christian or just love great powerful cinema.
Mel Gibson is supposedly going to start shooting another movie - the Resurrection . 

ps
today is also the anniversary of the Polish Crown, i.e., the coronation of Boleslaw I (Boleslaus) the Great/Brave in Gniezno, then the capital of Polish kingdom, in the year 1025AD. 

Valete

Juliusz Kossak - lady & grey Arabian

 Salvete Omnes,

a curb-bit bridle

National Museum of Warsaw has a collection of paintings by maestro Juliusz Kossak, some of these have been made accessible to the internet audience via the digitization project.
One of them is a medium size, 87,5cm x 76cm, oil on canvas work titled 'Amazonka (Amazon)'[ in black on grey Arabian horse] - painted in 1868AD.

NMW

The painting depicts a lady riding side-saddle on a beautiful grey Arabian in a park-like environment, perhaps in one of the Potocki family estates.
 The treatment of the Arabian and two other horses in the background shows the mastery of equestrian subjects by the painter. The unusual technique, i.e., oils, since Kossak already had been painting in watercolors, still show his mastery of the medium.  

During the late 1860s Juliusz Kossak, residing in Warsaw (Russian Empire) participated in many exhibits in Krakow, Paris, Munich and Dresden.
This painting was completed around the late summer of 1868, when our artists was exhibiting his new works in Dresden, Saxony.

Nota bene during the following year, 1869, Juliusz Kossak moved his atelier and family from Warsaw to Krakow, Austro-Hungarian Empire. Their Krakow property, a house with a garden, would become their family seat for the next century. 
enjoy

Valete

Prussian Homage 1525-2025

 Salvete Omnes,

today we could celebrate the 500 years anniversary of the Prussian Homage, when the treasonous and poisonous Teutonic Order State was dissolved and its Grand Master, Albert of Prussia, left the Holy Mother Church for the heretical new Protestant denomination of Lutheranism, was allowed to secularize  his state as the first Protestant state in Europe, and  became a vassal to the Polish king, Sigismund I (the Elder).

Prior to the Homage Grand Master Albert fought the last Polish-Teutonic war 1519-1521AD against the Polish Crown, allied with the Grand Duchy Muscovy and Holy Roman Emperor. Nota bene the pesky Grand Duchy of Lithuanian did not come to aid Polish realm, supposedly busy with the Muscovite onslaught. 

IMHO this treaty of Krakow finalized with the Homage was the gravest error of Polish Jagellon dynasts. One could say that to allow for this viperous state, the arch enemy of Polish kingdom since at least 1309AD,  to continue in its secular form carried not only the promise of treachery and duplicity, but prevented Polish realm from taking complete control over the Baltic shores from  the Gdansk Pomerania to the Lithuanian Zmudz coast.  The Teutonic State should have been incorporated into the  Polish realm, and Polish king made the Order's titular head. The subsequent decisions of Polish monarchs, from Sigismund II to Sigismund III and his son Wladyslaw IV just borught more treachery and promises of doom. In 1772 the ruler of Prussia , archvillain Frederick, instigated the First Partition of Poland.

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Archbishop and Crown Chancellor  Jan Łaski (1456-1531) was the proponent of liquidation of the Prussian state, along with queen Bona Sforza, but His Royal Majesty Sigismund I, one could say  the very master of many bad political decisions, refused to heed his own wife's and his own chancellor's counsel and advice. 

'Stupid is as stupid does' - said our American fictional hero, Forrest Gump.  

Jan Matejko painted this huge (388cm by 785cm) canvas, started in 1880 and finished in 1882,when Poland was just an idea  in the heads and hearts of the Poles partitioned between Russian Empire, Prussian state known as German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Jan Matejko, with his inspiring paintings, fought back, along with many Polish cultural giants of the era, the doom of Partitions and for the restitution of Polish state. 
Ave Jan Matejko

ps 

currently the Polish culture is in retreat and in a dismal state of nothingness, sadly. 

enjoy
Valete

Sir Briggs and other horses by De Prades

 Salvete Omnes,

Tredegar House obelisk, Wales, UK

  from the English countryside come this unusual obelisk to commemorate a horse - a 15 hands tall bay stallion named Sir Briggs. Briggs went to the Crimean War theater as a mount for Captain Godfrey Morgan, of 17th Lancers aka Light Dragoons UK, and galloped with his rider into the Valley of Death during the Charge of the Light Brigade.

Probably in 1854 Sir Briggs, then still just Briggs, was painted by Alfred F. de Prades (French-English, 1825-1885), one of the XIX century British Empire preeminent equestrian and portrait painters.

Sir Briggs lived through the war and died, age 28, at Morgan's estate in 1874.

and here in Cardiff, Morgan and Sir Briggs sculpted in full lancer and war steed glory on a pedestal

sculpture by sir William Goscombe John

Below,  some more of Alfred F. de Prades' works:

starting with his canvas from 1838, when he was but a 13 years old boy.

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a portrait of a horse

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@ Christies

enjoy

Valete

Adolph Menzel - horses and soldiers etc

 Salvete Omnes,

a quick illustrative post - on the equestrian etc themes within Adolph Menzel's works.

Adolph (1815-1905), knighted in 1898 as von Menzel, was a native to Prussian Silesia (born in Wroclaw, old seat of the Lower Silesia), and throughout the XIX century became the preeminent German and Prussian painter of the era in the German states and since 1871 the German Empire. 

Herr Adolph was skilled master in oils, gouache, drawing, printing, 

etchings and woodcuts.

enjoy

Valete

Jan Rosen - Amazon

 Salvete Omnes,

Polish painter Jan Bogumil Rosen (1854-1936) is famous for his equestrian and military-themed canvas - like the the immortal battle of Stoczek. 

He also painted portraits (in 1882), and here w have a very large painting - 73,6" by 66,5" (187cmx169cm)
I don't think his art has been published in an album, so it is kind of difficult to find a definitive collection of his life work. There is a collection of Jan B. Rosen' recollections written down by Anna Leo, published in Warsaw 1933. It is in Polish language and available to download on Polona - Polish National library.

His lineage is interesting, on one side he was the descendant of a famous astrologer Jacobus Leo, brought to Krolewiec/Konigsberg (now Kaliningrad), Ducal Prussia, by the Prussian duke Albrecht in the XVI century. His ancestors on maternal and paternal sides originally were of Jewish faith  but they converted back in the XVIII century etc to various Protestant denominations. His Warsaw ancestors were native to Warsaw, of wealthy bourgeois family, doctors and lawyers, scientists and artists etc.

per his art studies, Jan B. Rosen was educated under the tutelage of Jozef Brandt at the Academia of Fine Arts in Munich (Polish artists' veritable 'Mecca' during the Partition period) and later in Paris (Adacemie des Beaux-Artes) under Jean-Louis Gerome and Isidoreer Pils.

He was married to Wanda Hantke, daughter of the famous Polish Partition-period industrialist Bernard Ludwik Hantke, and they had one son who was the famous muralist Jan Henryk de Rosen (1891-1982) and two daughters, Zofia who was a sculptor, and Maria. 

Have a nice Saturday 

Valete