{"id":64804,"date":"2026-05-08T11:43:33","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T08:43:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/curatorial.ro\/uncategorized-en\/the-allegory-of-painting-and-disputing-the-foundations-of-art\/"},"modified":"2026-05-10T15:36:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T12:36:13","slug":"the-allegory-of-painting-and-disputing-the-foundations-of-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/curatorial.ro\/en\/art\/the-allegory-of-painting-and-disputing-the-foundations-of-art\/","title":{"rendered":"The allegory of painting and disputing the foundations of art"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Allegory of Painting”, oil on wood by Karl Gussow, dated 1895, is on display until the end of June in the Spanish Hall of the Romanian National Museum of Art.<\/p>\n

Coming from the Collection of the Royal Family, the work – unique in MNAR’s heritage – is included in the program “Works in the foreground”, coordinated by M\u0103lina Con\u021bu, historian and theorist of art and architecture, head of the European Art section of MNAR.<\/p>\n

This representation of painting, made at the end of the 19th century, when academism was being challenged by the artistic trends of the time, when photography had already emerged, brought back into question the fundamentals of art.<\/p>\n

The painting is rendered by Gussow in an elegant manner, a nude with the posture of an ancient statue, with defining elements – like the palette and the brush – in a modern temple to the decadent spirit of 1900s art.<\/p>\n

Supremacy of the arts<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The interest in representing the arts in allegorical form is closely linked to the Renaissance. With the advent of the academies of the arts came the dispute over the supremacy of the arts and the definition of their specificity. <\/p>\n

From the Middle Ages to the 17th century, the arts were represented by painters symbolically, from the form of deities to self-portraits, such as Artemisia Gentileschi, but also complexly, in the form of genre scenes, such as Frans van Mieris the Elder, Johannes Vermeer, Jacob Toorenvliet and Charles Alphonse Dufresnoy. The 18th century saw the most representations of creation. <\/p>\n

For several decades, the relationship with Antiquity was lost, but towards the end of the 19th century, some artists took up the subjects again.<\/p>\n

The “Allegory of Painting” of 1895 recalls the fundamentals. With an androgynous air, the main character can be visually likened to Apollo of Belvedere, an ancient marble sculpture discovered in the 19th century, Michelangelo’s David and Boticelli’s Venus. <\/p>\n

\"allegory

curatorial<\/p><\/div>\n

Symbolist painting<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Karl Gussow (1843, Havelberg – 1907, Munich), academic realist painter, is best known for genre paintings and portraits. From the Weimar school, he studied Dutch masters in the studio of the painter Arthur von Ramberg, then worked with the Belgian painter Ferdinand Pauwels, who had a decisive influence on his style, and in 1867 he came to Munich to continue his studies with Karl von Piloty. <\/p>\n

He traveled to Italy, then returned to Weimar and became a professor, including at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe. Between 1876 and 1881, he headed the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin, and from 1883, at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, he set up special courses for women. <\/p>\n

“The Allegory of Painting” is a rare subject in his work, created in the spirit of symbolism. After its temporary exhibition at the MNAR, the work will return to the museum. A last presentation of it in the context of “Allegories of the Arts. The Supremacy of Painting?” is scheduled at the museum on June 3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Allegory of Painting”, oil on wood by Karl Gussow, dated 1895, is on display until the end of June in the Spanish Hall of the Romanian National Museum of Art. Coming from the Collection of the Royal Family, the work […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":64751,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6965],"tags":[8270,8271,7158],"class_list":{"0":"post-64804","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-art","8":"tag-allegories-and-emblems","9":"tag-karl-gussow","10":"tag-mnar-en"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/curatorial.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/curatorial.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/curatorial.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curatorial.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curatorial.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64804"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/curatorial.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64805,"href":"https:\/\/curatorial.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64804\/revisions\/64805"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curatorial.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/curatorial.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curatorial.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curatorial.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}