The Canal at Holmes Bridge, Christian Mlested, oi on canvas, roughly 38 x 34 inches ( 96 x 87 cm).

Image is sourced from Wikipedia. This painting was auctioned in 2011; I assume it’s currently in a private collection.

Danish painter Christian Molsted, who was active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, gives us a view of a canal and bridge in horizontal light, with a strong sense of depth. Deep shadows in the foreground make the sunlit buildings, bright sky and reflections in the water look even brigter, and lead us back into the painting.

I particularly like the range of colors in the distant builings and church tower past the bridge. it’s a little hard to see, but he appears to have mixed in violets, magentas, yellows and even greens, while maintaining the sense of atmospheric perspective that demands the colors not be so vibrant as to come forward. There is also quite a mix of colors in the sky.

When painting or sketching, artists will often use a mirror to briefly reverse their view of a work that is difficult to see objectively because it has become too familiar from time spent working on it.

I enjoy applying that same idea to works of art that have become so iconic and familiar they are also difficult to see without cultural preconceptions.

I did it with Da Vinci’s La Gioconda (the Mona Lisa), and recently with Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Here, I’ve taken the way too familiar Botticelli masterpiece The Birth of Venus (which might be more accurately titled The Arrival of Venus, but that’s another story), and reversed it left to right in the hope that you can see it freshly, like a painting rather than a cultural artifact.

I had the delightful pleasure of seeing this painting in person on a trip to Florence some years ago, and seeing it reversed sparks my memory of the intensity of the experience.

On one level, Botticelli is painting naturalistically, in a largely representational manner, but when you start to appreciate the extent of the stylization and personal vision that Botticelli has applied to the faces and figures, the painting becomes more dreamlike and otherworldly.

I wrote about the painting in its proper orientation in this post: Eye Candy for Today: Botticelli’s Birth of Venus.

The images are taken from the very high resolution file (30,000 × 18,840 pixels, 211 MB), available on Wikimedia Commons.