03 — ARTWORK
Pigeon-post
- MEDIUM
- Oil on canvas, 106 x 84 cm
- TYPE
- Genre
PALETTE
HOVER OR TAP A SWATCH FOR NAME, SHARE AND HEX. SAMPLED FROM THE IMAGE — INDICATIVE, NOT A PIGMENT ANALYSIS.
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- FILE
- 746 × 926 px · JPEG
COMMENTARY
UNDERLINED TERMS ARE DEFINED IN THE GLOSSARY.
"What note is a gentleman supposed to write when he is sending a pair of pigeons to a young lady? ... 'Allow me to take the liberty of sending you, dear lady, a pair of doves as a present ... When watching them play, think of your faithful admirer." This is what the Home Secretary of Pest-Buda in the year 1832 suggested to the gentlemen.
The picture shows the home of a daughter of a good family. Her charming face and carriage are typical of the ideals of the last century: she is the symbol of innocence and protection. The pigeon makes the impression of innocence stronger and lets us know that secret emotions will soon wing away out of the cage of the bierdermeier room: a wing of the pigeon indicates that the bird is ready to fly.
The picture is a fascinating one and the way it is painted indicates virtuosity. Whites are rivalling one another in making the portrayal lifelike: the taffeta-like stiff silk dress is glistening as if metal, the soft grey of the feathers makes the white of the wing softer, but it is highlighted by the colour of the arms and the shoulders. The white of the window-post is radiating hard, to which the soft brown of the sunshone table and the fresh red of the rose answer. This picture is a portraitThe Roman portrait bust survived in the form of life-sized reliquaries of saints, but it was in 15th century Florence that the individual features and character of a contemporary sitter were accurately recorded by sculptors such as Donatello, Desiderio da Settignano, Mino da Fiesole and the Rossellino. A similar degree of realism occurs in 15th century tomb sculpture. The equestrian portrait, based on antique statues such as the Marcus Aurelius monument (Rome, Campidoglio), was revived in the 14th century. Two examples in fresco are Simone Martini's Guidoriccio (c. 1328; Siena, Palazzo Pubblico) and the posthumous portrait of Sir John Hawkwood (1436; Florence, Cathedral) by Uccello, which gives the illusion of a 3-dimensional statue seen from below. The Venetian Republic ordered imposing monuments from Donatello (1447; Gattarnelata, Padua) and Verrocchio (14799; Colleoni, Venice), whilst other statesmen ordered their own images to be erected in public places, directly relating themselves to the military heroes of ancient Rome. Another form of political portraiture derived from antiquity was the commemorative portrait medal designed by artists such as Pisanello. The carved or painted profile portrait became popular in the 1450s. The realism of the clear, flattened image, painted under the influence of Flemish examples by the Pollaiuolo brothers, Piero della Francesca and Botticelli, was superseded by the three-quarter and frontal portrait, psychologically more complex, such as Leonardo's enigmatic Mona Lisa (Paris, Louvre) with her momentary smile or Andrea del Sarto's arresting Portrait of a Man (London, National Gallery). The 16th century portrait became generalized, Lotto's Andrea Odoni (1527; Royal Collection) being an idealized concept of a collector rather than an individual. Group portraits, decorating whole rooms, include the narrative scenes of the Gonzaga court painted by Mantegna (completed 1474; Mantua, Palazzo Ducale) and the elaborate schemes commissioned by the Farnese family in Rome from Vasari (1546; Palazzo della Cancelleria) and Salviati (after 1553; Palazzo Farnese). Portraits were also incorporated into religious narratives, as in Ghirlandaio's fresco cycle painted for Giovanni Tornabuoni in S. Maria Novella, Florence (1486-90)., but it is a perfect genreIn a broad sense, the term is used to mean a particular branch or category of art; landscape and portraiture, for example, are genres of painting, and the essay and the short story are genres of literature. picture of the age, too ...
CITE THIS RECORD — BIBTEX
@online{wga-rfeb49338043b25,
author = {Krén, Emil and Marx, Daniel},
title = {Pigeon-post by BARABÁS, Miklós},
organization = {{Web Gallery of Art}},
date = {2026-09-12},
url = {https://beta.wga.hu/artists/barabs-mikls-r93b9ee42e7447e/pigeon-post-rfeb49338043b25},
urldate = {2026-09-12},
langid = {english}
}ACCESSED 2026-09-12. REPLACE THE AUTHOR FIELD WITH THE COMMENTARY AUTHOR WHERE ONE IS NAMED.
