/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

>>6943735
at least post the full jfc

>>5138263
>I always wondered how they made a living when it was a niche profession
That's because, unlike today when you get paid pennies to shit out generic illustration #2674837 in two weeks if you make it, if you managed to make it back then you would get very rich and influential, and quality was prioritized above all else. Many paintings took many months to make and they had all sorts of human models and props available to them to use as reference as they needed it.

>>4861774
In this picture we see the newly dead hovering on the banks of that river of the lower world which they must cross in Charon’s boat ere they reach their ultimate destination.

Hermes Necropompos is here fulfilling his important function of conducting the shades of the dead from the upper to the lower world. In Mr. Hirschl’s rendering but few of these souls are glad to leave the sunlit earth behind them. Its joys and attractions still hold them spellbound, only quite a few, mostly young children and old men, are resigned to their mortal fate.

The dissatisfied shades crowd around Hermes as he strides among them and implore him to relax his step, to stay the march of doom. But Hermes walks on regardless, with the calm inexorableness of a god, walks on and past the craving throng.

But implacable though he must be to their entreaties, he is not here depicted as deaf and insensible to their sufferings. It is this that gives to his figures a sympathetic grandeur.


In the middle distance Charon is seen approaching in the boat that shall row these souls to their final abode. It is the sight of his barque on the black waters of the Acheron that has struck the multitude with such terror. The dread passage once made, all hope is ended

>>4441310
I agree with this.