o e o n S t s p r d 5 4 0 6 a 1 0 8 2 e a r 6 t 7 M g c 0 u e 0 7 i s g A d l : 3 c Y 4 a h y 9 7 a 0 2 7 l u m t ·
THE REAL CASANOVA Giacomo Casanova was an Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice... Prince Charles de Ligne, a friend (and uncle of his future employer), described him around 1784 when he was about 60 years old… “HE would be a very fine man if he was not ugly. He is tall, built like a Hercules, but with an almost African complexion” SOURCE; (The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, the Prince of Adventurers, Volume 1; 1902) Now is as good a time as any to mention that all Africans are so called black, but all so called blacks are not Africans… (ex. so called black Semites, so called black Oceanians and Australoids, so called black South East Asians, etc.) Giacomo Girolamo Casanova was a Venetian adventurer and author… His autobiography, Histoire de ma vie (Story of My Life), is regarded as one of the most authentic sources of the customs and norms of European social life during the 18th century… He has become so famous for his often complicated and elaborate affairs with women that his name is now synonymous with "womanizer" He associated with European royalty, popes, and cardinals, along with the artistic figures Voltaire, Goethe, and Mozart… The REAL portrait of Casanova is now identified at Christie’s as “Head of a youth, a study” from the ‘Venetian School’, 18th century… The portrait was painted by Francesco Giuseppe Casanova circa 1750… Francesco was the younger brother of Giacomo Casanova… Francesco’s career began in the workshops of Giovanni Antonio Guardi… Guardi was one of the founders of the Venetian Academy (Venetian School) in 1750… In regard to the other portrait, clearly, there is no attempt to accurately depict Casanova, caricature is used… A surprising number of people, do not understand that museum art, movies and television, reflect what is called "Artistic license"... It is a colloquial term, or euphemism, used to denote the DISTORTION OF FACT... Beginning during the 20th century and even earlier, so called white artists took to depicting historical people, as they hoped or imagined them to look, and in doing so, they made EVERYONE so called White, but that is not reality... In the arts, Idealism encourages imagination and attempts to realize a mental conception of beauty, a standard of perfection, juxtaposed to naturalism and realism... In painting, idealism refers to the tradition of creating a "perfect" figure - one with a “goodlooking” face, “perfect” hair, a “good” body shape and no outward blemishes of any kind, rarely if ever painted or drawn from life... Essentially, it’s an "artificial" style of painting, that bears no resemblance to naturalism (caricature) The vast majority of people know absolutely nothing about portraiture or realistic portrait paintings (Realism) and the necessary techniques involved to produce one… People just assume that all of the portrait paintings that they’ve ever seen of so called European nobility were in fact real and authentic… They don’t know about shadows, edges, and skin / flesh tones… A harsh dark shadow inhabiting the edge of the nose looks like a blotch; cheekbones appear as dark hollows making the person appear gaunt… The portrait may otherwise appear flat, with wishy-washy shadows that fails to inform on the facial contours… Applying ‘skin tone’ or ‘flesh tint’ over the prevailing areas of the portrait painting and then overlaying a dark color on top, to express shadows, creates the illusion of dark pools over the face… Perceiving shadows as having definite edges—expressing this view on the painting will make the portrait appear unnaturally harsh… Failing to observe how the edges of shadows blend into darkness—creates an unwanted patchy appearance to the face… A common problem I see with these idealized portraits—that reflect artistic license, is that they only use hard edges… This can give a painting a very unnatural / unrealistic appearance… Most certainly not indicative of a REAL “Old Master Painting”
