Comparative Analysis Paper Art History

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say the same for the faces within The Death of Socrates. The faces have almost no emotion

and stare blankly. While socrates raises his hand in a protest, or perhaps because he is saying

something, his face remains stoic, and unchanged which conveys the emotion, or lack thereof in

the scene. The two disciples behind him that look forward, also with blank stares on their faces

just like socrates in front of him. It just seemed as though, while looking at this painting, it was

hard for me to draw myself away from these three faces and how absolutely lifeless they were to

me. They kept bringing me back and overall it affected the way I read the composition.

Other quintessential elements of the classic art period that reside within this piece would

have to be the color palette chosen. The tones are very muted, nothing too bright nor vibrant and

also a profound use of both red and blue tones appear throughout the painting. The depth, as

shown in the hallway to the left side of the painting and the overall fogginess of the painting, I

feel, are also recurring themes that seem to happen throughout classical and neoclassical

painting. In The Abduction of The Sabine Women there are no clear lines of sight to the back of

the image, like the tunnel present in The Death of Socrates. Even with this tunnel the foreground

of the image seems to lack depth and overall the painting seems very flat. By contrast, The

Abduction of the Sabine Women has a lot of depth which could be due to the presence of all of

the figures taking up the frame of the painting. There are many layers of characters within the

image while The Death of Socrates really only has one or two layers present within it, thus

making it appear flat as I was viewing the image.

While painting these images and laying down the brush strokes the artists took very

similar approaches. Theres very little remnant of the artists hand in the work, including the lack

of a signature. Signatures seemed to be occurring a lot in paintings during this time period of the

artistic world. The only difference I was able to see between the two artists styles, was the fact

that, although it was a newer painting, The Death of Socrates had quite a few cracks displaced

throughout. I found this weird because if this painting was over a century older than The

Abduction of the Sabine Women then why would it looked more aged and disheveled? Perhaps

this was a conscious choice by the artist to pay further homage to the classical artists where he

took his influence from. The form in which the figures arranged the figures and subject matter

within the image seem to resemble each other as well. Both sets of figures are very triangular,

with the most important figures, Socrates and Romulus, being the top most point of the triangles.

This is a significant theme that appears quite often in classic and renaissance art. Lastly, in

regards to form I would like to mention the dimensions of these paintings. The abduction of the

Sabine Women was notably larger than the Death of socrates. Height wise its about nine inches

larger, and width wise it is about five inches longer. This difference allowed the artist to engrain

more detail into every part of this painting which in turn allows me as the viewer to pick it apart

much easier.

I found both of these paintings extremely interesting and also good in their own respects.

They are both very good examples of the styles of art that were going on during the times to

which they belonged. While they were truly only about one hundred years apart, the two

paintings had many differences that set the standard for the time periods that they were produced.

They also shared many similarities, and themes that continue to echo into art even during modern

times.