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[slightly offtopic ?] Classical paintings of daytime moon ?
Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2015 5:20 pm
by vichug
sometimes i see the moon in the sky during the day ; and it's pretty beautiful and very slightly weird. But i was wondering why i had seen a day moon so rarely in classical (i mean pre-contemporary, as in figurative) painting. I mean, it's quite a nice subject for a painter, and there could be symbolical significance, so how comes it's so rarely represented... maybe someone know a nice painting of a daytime moon somewhere ?
Re: [slightly offtopic ?] Classical paintings of daytime moo
Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2015 6:34 pm
by Chris Peterson
vichug wrote:sometimes i see the moon in the sky during the day ; and it's pretty beautiful and very slightly weird. But i was wondering why i had seen a day moon so rarely in classical (i mean pre-contemporary, as in figurative) painting. I mean, it's quite a nice subject for a painter, and there could be symbolical significance, so how comes it's so rarely represented... maybe someone know a nice painting of a daytime moon somewhere ?
A fine question, which tempted me to Google "moon in renaissance art". Well, what do you know? I guess that's a daytime moon.
(Front and rear views of God creating the Sun, Moon, and planets.)
Re: [slightly offtopic ?] Classical paintings of daytime moo
Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2015 7:33 pm
by vichug
Hah, nice one
that's kind of cheating though, since day and night were a very new concept at the time of the depicted scene
Re: [slightly offtopic ?] Classical paintings of daytime moo
Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2015 9:41 pm
by geckzilla
I found this one rather quickly, but strangely the moon is very large and is not very realistic. It's more like something added for compositional interest than anything.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evening_Mood
It is not surprising to me that it is not easy to find in paintings, especially in figurative paintings where the artist has it in their mind that reality must be copied exactly as seen. You can see Bouguereau clearly painted the moon as he imagined it rather than how it actually appeared.
I think the moon might be depicted in this painting,
Travellers on a Path in an Extensive Rhineland Landscape (good grief) by a Dutch painter named Barend Cornelis Koekkoek.
http://www.artrenewal.org/artwork/934/9 ... -large.jpg
This is how you can expect the moon to be depicted by a painter using only eyes and with a focus on realism. No details. Just a small blip. Not something to focus on. It's easily lost behind a cloud or a tree. Of course, I can't really say for sure that is the moon but it's still about what I'd expect.
Re: [slightly offtopic ?] Classical paintings of daytime moo
Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2015 10:15 pm
by geckzilla
Re: [slightly offtopic ?] Classical paintings of daytime moon ?
Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2018 2:56 pm
by vichug
little less than 3 years later, but thanks for your answers geckzilla
some very fine painting there. Thougthe moon is depicted as a crescant, rarely more than that...strange. hm.
