Paintings by Ilya Repin, Frederic Edwin Church, Peter Paul Rubens Essay

Paintings by Ilya Repin, Frederic Edwin Church, Peter Paul Rubens - Essay Example The essay "Paintings by Ilya Repin, Frederic Edwin Church, Peter Paul Rubens" discovers three paintings by such famous artists as Ilya Repin, Frederic Edwin Church, Peter Paul Rubens. The discussed paintings are â€Å"The Volga Boatmen† (1870-1873), â€Å"Heart of the Andes† (1859) and â€Å"The Battle of the Amazons† (1618-1620). While there have been several periods in history where artists from a given region or working on a particular subject have following a seemingly ‘set’ approach to how to convey their ideas, these approaches can often be traced backward or forward to other periods, artists and regions. The earliest of these paintings is the Rubens, in which the artist depicts a battle scene carried out between the legendary female warrior clan of the Amazons with the Athenian king Theseus and his men. Presented with a color palette dominated by golds and browns, the scene is difficult to make out because Rubens generally avoids using sharp l ines except in the definition of the bridge they are fighting on and the shaping of some of the horses involved. This suggests a feeling of softness even in the middle of the fighting, suggesting that the battle is somehow less fierce than it might have been if the combatants were all male. The soft shapes falling into the river have an impression of being women, indicating that they are losing the battle. Perhaps because of the softness, the mood is somehow romantic, as if this were a struggle of men and women that ends not in death but in sexual conquest.