Flesh and Blood
A few years ago the Seattle Art Museum put on an amazing exhibition “Flesh and Blood: Italian Masterpieces from the Capodimonte Museum.” It was an amazing collection of powerful works. The brilliant, bloody, and realistic depictions of the human body, suffering, and emotion is quite astounding and moving.
Flesh and Blood features many profound expressions of the intersection of physical and spiritual existence – the human body as a vehicle to express love and devotion, labor and violence, tragic suffering, and spiritual release. Though the cultural context is different, including the abuse of power and relationships between men and women. The exhibition offers the rare opportunity to see how brilliant and innovative artists such as Raphael, Titian, El Greco, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Jusepe Ribera approached these themes with originality and directness that seems fresh today.
From the SAM Flesh and Blood Program
Some of my favorite pieces from the exhibit.
Portrait of Cardinal Alessadro Farnese, Raphael 
Drunken Silenus, Jusepe de Ribera 
Feast of Belshazzar, Mattia Preti Judit and Holofernes, Artemisia Gentileschi
