Bob Kessel signing his print based on Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel art

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“The greatest danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark.”

- MICHELANGELO

Sistine Chapel (Italian: Cappella Sistina) is the best-known chapel in the Apostolic Palace, the official residence of the Pope in Vatican City. It is famous for its architecture, evocative of Solomon’s Temple of the Old Testament, and its decoration which has been frescoed throughout by the greatest Renaissance artists including Michelangelo, Raphael, Bernini, and Sandro Botticelli. Under the patronage of Pope Julius II, Michelangelo painted 12,000 square feet of the chapel ceiling between 1508 and 1512. He resented the commission, and believed his work only served the Pope’s need for grandeur. However, today the ceiling, and especially The Last Judgement, are widely believed to be Michelangelo’s crowning achievements in painting.

Bob Kessel’s art series “MICHELANGELO” features pictures based on the works of the Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo Buonarroti. These pictures are available as signed and numbered limited edition original fine art prints. Contact Bob Kessel for pricing and availability.

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IGNUDI by Bob Kessel
after Michelangelo from the Sistine Chapel

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TEMPTATION by Bob Kessel
after Michelangelo from the Sistine Chapel

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WRESTLERS by Bob Kessel
after Michelangelo from the Sistine Chapel

Wrestlers sketch by Michelangelo

DANIEL IN THE LION’S DEN by Bob Kessel after Peter Paul Rubens

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Bob Kessel has created an art series titled, “BIBLE”. It features pictures based on the works of famous artists throughout history like the picture “DANIEL IN THE LION’S DEN”  originally by Peter Paul Rubens, shown above and the picture “DOUBTING THOMAS” shown below based on a painting by Caravaggio. These pictures are available as signed and numbered limited edition fine art prints. Contact Bob Kessel for pricing and availability.

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DOUBTING THOMAS by Bob Kessel after Caravaggio

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Also known as Saint Thomas Putting his Finger on Christ’s Wound. Thomas is one of Jesus’ twelve apostles. When Jesus shows himself to his followers after his resurrection, Thomas refuses to believe that this man really is his master. He demands evidence. Jesus shows him the wound caused by a Roman soldier’s lance before his crucifixion. He invites Thomas to put his finger on it. Caravaggio shows that Thomas soon casts aside all doubt.

Almost identical copies of this painting and that of the Pilgrimage to Emmaus were found in a church in the French town of Loches, in 1999. After investigation, it was announced in 2006 that both works were authentic Caravaggios. Both contain the shield of arms of Philippe de Bethune, a friend of Caravaggio’s and French ambassador in Rome. Records show that Bethune acquired four paintings from the painter. Caravaggio often made several copies of his own paintings.

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DOUBTING THOMAS by Caravaggio

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Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Italian painter with great influence both in Italy and abroad.

Caravaggio is particularly renowned for his use of chiaroscuro, a technique that uses light and dark to achieve a 3-D effect. Caravaggio breaks away from the tradition of symmetrical figures and detailed backgrounds. His figures do retain a traditional monumentality. His later work is less plastic.

Caravaggio takes his name from the village where he was born. He receives his first training in Milan, specializing in still-lives. Around 1592 he takes to Rome, the spiritual capital of the Italian peninsula, switching his subject matter to street-life and young boys.

In 1595 Caravaggio’s talent catches the eye of cardinal Francesco Del Monte, who subsequently becomes his first patron. Caravaggio’s three paintings on the life of St Matthew cause a sensation: never before has a saint, let alone an apostle, been shown like this. (calling, inspiration, martyrdom) After this succès fou, Caravaggio takes all his subjects from the New Testament.

Caravaggio’s life is as turbulent as his personality. He has many run-ins with the law and is arrested on several occasions. In 1606 a bet over a game of tennis leads to an argument, at which point Caravaggio draws his sword and kills his opponent. He flees to Naples, intending to take the long way home to Rome - where friends are lobbying for his rehabilitation - via Malta and Sicily. On his wanderings he produces several masterpieces, such as The Beheading of St John the Baptist, which he creates in Malta. He dies before reaching Rome, probably of pneumonia, in Porto Ercole. Several days after his death word arrives of papal absolution.

Caravaggio’s influence is widespread: outside Italy he inspires painters as diverse as Georges de La Tour and members of the Utrecht School, e.g. Gerrit van Honthorst – artists who in their turn are later to influence Rembrandt.

Pablo Picasso quote by Bob Kessel

Bob Kessel has created a new art series titled, “ARTISTS ON ART” based on not so well known quotes by well known artists. The pictures are available as limited edition fine art prints, signed and numbered by the artist. Contact Bob Kessel for prices and availability.

Bob Kessel’s “ARTISTS ON ART” series includes the following artists; Salvador Dali, Leonardo Da Vinci, Giorgio DeChirico, Roy Lichtenstein, Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, Paul Klee, Rene Magritte, Henri Matisse, Michelangelo, Piet Mondrian, Claude Monet, Georgia O’Keeffe, Pablo Picasso, Auguste Renoir, Peter Paul Rubens, John Singer Sargent, Ben Shahn, Su Tung Po, Vincent Van Gogh, Orson Welles, James McNeill Whistler

NUDE WITH MONET by Bob Kessel

Bob Kessel has created a new art series titled, “THE NUDE” based on the works of artists throughout time. The pictures are available as limited edition fine art prints, signed and numbered by the artist. Contact Bob Kessel for prices and availability.

If there is one genre of art that seems to have played a greater role than any other, it is the nude. For at least 30,000 years, humans have represented the naked form in a variety of ways. From the ideal to the real, the Romantic to the Surrealist, there has been almost no end of works devoted to the unclothed human body.

The English language, with its elaborate generosity, distinguishes between the naked and the nude. To be naked is to be deprived of our clothes, and the word implies some of the embarrassment most of us feel in that condition. The word ‘nude’ on the other hand, carries, in educated usage, no uncomfortable overtone. … In fact, the word was forced into our vocabulary by critics of the early 18th century to persuade the artless islanders that, in countries where painting and sculpture were practiced and valued … the naked human body was the central subject of art.

Rubens did for the female nude what Michelangelo had done for the male. He realised so fully its expressive possibilities that, for the next century, all those that were not slaves of academism, inherited his vision of the body as pearly and plump. Round the Venuses or Dianas of the Fontainebleau School hangs a smell of stylish erotism, impossible, like all smells, to describe, but strong as ambergris or musk. One reason is that a trace of Gothicism, with all that it implies of seductive guesswork, persists in their proportions. Up to the time of le Moyne or even Houdon, the bodies of French goddesses retain the small breasts, long tapering limbs, and slightly accented stomachs of the sixteenth century. To this tradition of quasi-Gothic elegance certain painters of the dix-huitieme, Watteau above all, added Rubens’ feeling for the colour and texture of skin. No other painter has had a more sensitive eye for texture than Watteau, and the rarity of his nudes may even reflect a kind of shyness born of too tremulous desire which the spectacle of the living surface aroused in him. Perhaps the very unfrigid statues in his parks are telling us that he could only contain his excitement when the body was supposed to be of stone.