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| Berthe Morisot, The Shuttlecock, 1888. Private collection |
The Getty Museum is showing Berthe Morisot's The Shuttlecock on loan from a private collection. The sitter is Jeanne Bonnet, a friend of Morisot's daughter, who appears in other works by the artist. Jeanne holds a shuttlecock—then made of feathers, cork, and leather—and perhaps a racquet, gear for jeu de volant (similar to modern badminton). The shuttlecock and background figures showcase Morisot's feathery brushwork, radical even in the Impressionist circle.
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| Cornelis de Heem, A Vanitas Still Life with a Skull and an Échorché on a Draped Table, about 1669. Collection of Ariane and Lionel Sauvage |
Ariane and Lionel Sauvage have lent a weirdo memento mori by Cornelis de Heem. The little-known Cornelis was son to the great still-painter Jan Davidsz. de Heem. The Vanitas Still Life with a Skull is a compendium of mortality symbols, of which the most unusual is an échorché (an artist's model of a flayed body, for studying musculature). In this case the model's flesh is rotting away, like a medieval figure of Death, and the toothy expression unsettles the composition. Death stands on a bubble, a reminder that one minute you're here, the next you're gone. On view in the same room (E203) is a classic still life by Cornelis' dad.
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| Detail of A Vanitas Still Life |
A painting by an unknown Nuremberg School artist is a memorial to Katharina Held, wife of Sigismund, a merchant. It originally hung in Nuremberg's St. Sebald church. The crucifixion is closely based on a Schoengauer print from about half a century earlier. Katharina, Sigismund, and children appear in the lower register, arrayed like decals on the back of an SUV.
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| Nuremberg Master, The Crucifixion with the Donor Sigismund Held and His Family; An Epitaph for Katharina Held of Nuremberg, about 1518. Private collection, Los Angeles |
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