art (Page 5)

Piercing is popular, but sometimes infection can set in. The artist Rembrandt may have had problems with a pierced ear, especially since he lived before the invention of antibiotics, according to British surgeon Ben Cohen. In many of his self-portraits, Rembrandt paints himself with a deformed left earlobe, and earrings were fashionable for men in the 17th century.

Cohen says, “In the portrait painted circa 1628, at the age of 22, the left lobule was occupied by a round swelling with a small bunch of what were apparently granulations at the upper edge. This swelling was also present in some later portraits but by about 1642 it had become a thickening.”
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Want to walk around inside a great old master painting, rather than just stand back and look at it hanging on the wall? Microsoft has developed a program that lets you have the feeling of literally being inside a religious painting by an Old Master. “You feel yourself present in the painting and could even find yourself next to Christ,” says Antonio Criminisi. This program could also solve the current debate on whether Renaissance painters relied on mirrors to help them create perspective, a theory of the artist David Hockney. It would also make it more fun to visit paintings on the internet, rather than see them in real museums. “A virtual museum on the web means you work around the corridors. We think this is a little boring,” says Criminisi.read more