Vindicated by History/Art

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


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  • This happens periodically in (painting) art especially between the renaissance and the 20th century. A rising new art movement is at first derided, and as it becomes accepted the preceding movement turns into the target instead. A couple of centuries later, the art world and scholarship see them both having merits.
  • Piero Della Francesca was fairly obscure until the 1920s as well. He is now considered one of the greatest quattrocento artists.
  • Caravaggio was obscure to infamous until the 1920s.
  • Artemisia Gentileschi, one of the few truly relevant Renaissance female painters, was for a long while looked down and seen as dependant of the fame of her father. Then the Feminist Movement came by. What's that you say, a Renaissance woman painter that focuses on pictures on women and whose masterpiece depicts the biblical Judith violently decapitating King Holofornes a.k.a. in a position of strength? Let's just say she came to develop quite the fanbase.
  • The Impressionistes (Monet, Renoir, Manet, etc.) were ridiculed at first (at their first joint exposition, the public came en masse to mock their work), even though they were more successful later on. Today, well let's say that many of the world's most expensive paintings are from them...
  • Vincent van Gogh is a popular example of this, although in the months before his death he was getting serious notice.
  • The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, painted by John Singer Sargent, was originaly disliked by critics for being too big, having too much empty space in it, and having the subjects scattered about randomly. Now it is considered one of Sargent's better works, and is used in a couple of plays, poems, and mystery novels.
    • Also, Portrait of Madame X, when originally exhibited, caused a great deal of scandal in the art circle. Sargent was forced to leave Paris as a result. The painting would become one of his and the era's most iconic pieces.
  • For most of M. C. Escher's life, he was looked down upon by "serious" artists (as were all artists who specialized in lithography). He is now a fixture of art history textbooks (as well as poster shops) and your math teacher's walls.
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