[HN Gopher] Born into slavery, he rose to the top of France's ar...
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Born into slavery, he rose to the top of France's art world
Author : prismatic
Score : 93 points
Date : 2024-07-12 13:24 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| rob74 wrote:
| https://archive.is/eAgFS
| asveikau wrote:
| I like the photorealism in some of these images. They look
| somewhat like contemporary people even though it's more than 200
| years ago.
| argiopetech wrote:
| People haven't changed much. We just wear cheaper clothes.
|
| No disagreement about the excellent art.
| asveikau wrote:
| Obviously clothing and hairstyles change. More recently,
| average BMI is higher, or people are more likely to be
| tattooed. I'm sure there's other differences that aren't
| coming to mind.
|
| But even setting aside any of that, it's pretty rare that I
| see a portrait that old and I think it could conceivably be
| recent.
| r14c wrote:
| even the amount of tattoos depends on culture and region.
| lots of cultures around the world practice some form of
| tattooing. even the BMI thing varies somewhat because
| different BMIs are healthy for different ethnic groups.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| This is a tangent to the mention of cultural BMI, but I
| recently came across these:
|
| Ritual fattening of Massa men
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/32978275_Guru_-
| fatt...
|
| Leblouh, the force feeding of girls to fatten them.
|
| https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-tradition-
| leblouh-in...
| saagarjha wrote:
| Well the clothing and hairstyle in the top photo looks
| pretty modern to me
| tetris11 wrote:
| People haven't changed much over the last 2000 years I think,
| just different tools and terminologies
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| Its funny that you say that since photography was invented in
| France in that period. Was it the paintings that were
| photorealistic, or the photos that were painterly?
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| Mirrors did exists since a long time though.
|
| You can substitute "photorealistic" with "looks like the
| square (or rectangle) picture in the mirror".
|
| Turns out photographic pictures did capture that "image in
| the mirror" picture. Funnily enough, using... Mirrors.
|
| > ... or the photos that were painterly?
|
| The answer is simply no. The real world doesn't work like
| that: photons/mirrors/prisms/our eyes "capturing" photons.
| Physics vs dialectic if you want.
| kingkawn wrote:
| The nature of the photographic mechanism becomes a new
| definition of "reality," but it is still a cultural
| byproduct, leaving Realness to be still uncovered in all
| kinds of ways
| taejo wrote:
| > You can substitute "photorealistic" with "looks like the
| square (or rectangle) picture in the mirror".
|
| Reflections in the mirror have depth and motion. Even
| without the viewer or the subject moving, the viewer can
| see depth in the mirror that isn't in a photo. In those
| respects, photos are more like paintings than mirrors. Of
| course, in other respects, they're more like mirrors.
| spython wrote:
| In early photography history there was a pictorialist
| movement where people used special sort focus lenses to
| introduce more of a painterly quality. These lenses, such
| as Rodenstock Imagon still exist and are sought after.
| WalterBright wrote:
| For how photorealistic paintings can be made with little
| painting skill, a setup with mirrors, and lots of patience:
|
| Tim's Vermeer https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3089388
| throwup238 wrote:
| It's currently closed for renovation and set to reopen in
| November but if you have a chance to go see the Frick
| Collection in New York, I strongly recommend it for two of the
| most photorealistic paintings I've ever seen: the portraits of
| Sir Thomas More [1] and Thomas Cromwell [2] by Hans Holbein the
| Younger (sadly the digitized versions are low resolution and
| don't do them justice).
|
| The paintings are 500 years old but look like photographic
| portraits, down to the individual hairs in the stubble on
| More's chin. Realism was in vogue at the time but there weren't
| many other artists who were as good as Hans Holbein.
|
| [1] https://collections.frick.org/objects/100/sir-thomas-more
|
| [2] https://collections.frick.org/objects/101/thomas-cromwell
| jajko wrote:
| Thats an obsessive level of detail for that era. Later
| Rembrandt's school were focusing more on the play of shadows
| on given subject and its surroundings, but most of the
| details were not to this level, at least not those I've seen
| up close (but still some parts were pretty crazy, ie
| embroidered collar or vein structure of wrinkled skin of an
| old woman).
| vidarh wrote:
| It mentions Dumas held a eulogy for him. Dumas father came from a
| similar family background: He was the son of a French nobleman
| and a Caribbean slave, and Dumas' grandfather bought his father
| free and brought him to France, where he ended up a general under
| Napoleon.
| thelock85 wrote:
| Came here to say this... The Black Count was such an
| illuminating read. It's surreal to think that Dumas' own father
| was the inspiration for writing Count of Monte Cristo.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Along these lines - the life story of Abram Petrovich
| Gannibal,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abram_Petrovich_Gannibal, who
| was Alexander Pushkin's great grandfather, is jaw-dropping
| incredible to me. I'm really surprised a Hollywood movie
| hasn't been made about him.
| sillyfluke wrote:
| Unless there were gaping liberties taken with facts in that
| book, I can't for life of me fathom how that book still
| hasn't been made into a movie yet. It's amazing how one
| person was at the right place at the right time and at the
| wrong place at the wrong time in two very extreme ways in one
| lifetime.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| The Wikipedia page for him,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillaume_Guillon-Lethi%C3%A8r...,
| states that he was _not_ born into slavery, but instead:
|
| > He was born out of wedlock, to Marie-Francoise Dupepaye, a free
| person of color, and Pierre Guillon, a colonial Royal Notary.
|
| The source for that sentence states his mother was "une esclave
| affranchie noire" - a freed black slave.
|
| May seem like a small detail, and I'm not sure the Wikipedia page
| is correct, but I think it's worth correcting the reporting if it
| is.
| techaudible83 wrote:
| The article does discuss this, and the main point to understand
| is that his mother was a slave and was then emancipated,
| meaning any children she had prior to emancipation were born
| into slavery. The article says that his father emancipated both
| his mother and him. It does not state that there is 100%
| definitive evidence of his status at birth but given his
| mother's status and the lack of baptismal records for his
| birth, it is very likely he was born a slave.
| ralferoo wrote:
| > "Le Thiere" is French for "the third"
|
| Is this true? I know modern French is troisieme, but I'd never
| seen this before, so I googled. There seems to be nothing on the
| internet about it, and remarkably few matches for Thiere beyond
| misspellings of theiere (teapot), which makes me think the
| authors of this article just made this up.
| sattoshi wrote:
| Troisieme is the third when counting. "Tiers" is the third when
| taking a fraction.
|
| I can only speak to modern french though.
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