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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/The Blind Leading the Blind/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Ian Rose (talk) 04:45, 28 June 2014 (diff).

The Blind Leading the Blind

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Nominator(s): Curly Turkey (gobble) 08:11, 17 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A masterpiece of the Flemish Renaissance and one of Pieter Bruegel the Elder's last paintings, The Blind is notable for it's its unusual, dynamic composition, and may (or may not) contain some kind of political message. Curly Turkey (gobble) 08:11, 17 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Preliminary comments On a quick look, seems pretty good, but perhaps not using the full range of modern sources, many of which will be in French, Dutch or German. The unusual nature of the painting, as a pretty monumental depiction of a "low" subject one might expect at a smaller size, or conversely an allegory given a very realistic setting, must surely be covered in the sources you have. Landscape with the Fall of Icarus and The Peasant and the Nest Robber are (presumably) earlier stages in this progression. Pieter Aertsen should be mentioned in this connection. Generally, especially as our biography is so poor, the painting needs more explanation in its wider context of Bruegel's work.
You should quickly explain how the Farnese paintings came to be in Naples. I've seen the painting, which is indeed very memorable. The image is unfortunately rather pale - more so than the original as I remember it. I can send JSTOR stuff if that helps. Johnbod (talk) 15:03, 17 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Johnbod: Okay, I've expanded on the provenance of the work. As a first stab, I'm thinking of replacing the first two paragraphs of "Background" with the following; please tell me what do you think:
Sixteenth-century Europe was undergoing many societal changes: the Protestant Reformation and its rejection of ostentatious religious imagery; the growth of humanism and its emphasis on empiricism at the expense of religious faith; and the growth of the middle class amidst the rise of mercantalism. It was a time of rapid advances in learning and knowledge, and a move towards the empirical sciences—the age of the heliocentric theory of Copernicus and of Gutenberg's printing presses. Several of Bruegel's contemporaries were leading minds in their fields; the cartography of Ortelius influenced the painting of landscapes, and the advances Vesalius brought to the study of anatomy via direct observation of dissected bodies motivated artists to pay greater attention to the accuracy of the anatomy depicted in their works.
Art came to be traded in open markets; artists sought to distinguish themselves with subjects different from traditional noble, mythological, and Biblical ones, and developed new, realistic techniques based on empirical observation. Classical literature provided precedents for dealing with "low" subjects in art. Genre art and its depiction of scenes of ordinary people in everyday life arose against this background.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525–69) had begun his career illustrating landscapes and fantastic scenes in a dense style that earned him a reputation as artistic heir to Hieronymus Bosch. He soon came to follow the example of another master: Pieter Aertsen had made a name for himself in the 1550s depicting everyday scenes in a highly realistic style, such as the detailed array of meat products that dominate his large Butcher's Stall of 1551. Bruegel's subjects became more quotidian and his style observational. He achieved fame for detailed, accurate and realistic portrayals of peasants, with whom his paintings were popular. He painted on inexpensive linen canvas and oak panel and avoided scenes of magnificence and portraits of nobility or royalty. The peasants Bruegel at first depicted were featureless and undifferentiated; as his work matured their physiognomy became markedly more detailed and expressive.
I've stripped out the refs for the above, but I do have refs for it all. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 00:14, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, much better. Johnbod (talk) 00:39, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Johnbod: Do you mean it's fine like that, or is there something you'd add or change? Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 00:51, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'd appreciate anything you could throw at me. As for the size, I only came across something in passing that it was the largest of the year, but no further details, so I put it in a footnote. I'll see what I can find about the other stuff. Curly Turkey (gobble) 21:42, 17 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't found more than you have now, in fact, though I haven't read them all. Johnbod (talk) 17:01, 1 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • More Comments
  • That "Bruegel's was in the collection of Ferdinando Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, Fetti's patron." (Legacy) should also be in "Provenance". But there seems something of a contradiction here: Ferdinando Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua was only Duke from 1612, the same year as "The Blind Leading the Blind and The Misanthrope were discovered in the collection of the Count Giovanni Battista Masi of Parma in 1612 when Ranuccio I ....". Does this work? Or was it the son's copy in Mantua?
  • Lindsay and Huppé, pp. 384-5 make rather more of the not-very-impoverished clothes of the men. Worth expanding on? Ok, there's more later.
  • Caption "The Blind Leading the Blind has hung for centuries in the National Museum of Capodimonte in Naples, Italy." - essentially true (2.5 centuries anyway), but note the comings and goings of the French Revolutionary years in Museo di Capodimonte. I don't suppose we know where it was during that: with the king (who took 66 paintings), in central Naples or in Rome or Paris?
  • The musical instrument of the leader is not mentioned; apparently a hurdy-gurdy. Some on that here, pp 274-5
  • Brown isn't much of a source, & you can get all that elsewhere - eg Lindsay and Huppé, pp. 384-5. I'd drop him.
  • "The Blind Leading the Blind is considered one of the great masterpieces of painting." well, "often", or "sometimes" maybe, especially when your most recent ref is 1959.
  • "He painted on inexpensive linen canvas and oak panel" - oak panel was pretty expensive; canvas less so for a successful artist, but not remarkably cheap. What else would he have painted on? I think he sometimes used copper for small paintings - also pricey. I'm not sure what the point is here, or that the ref is expert in artists' materials & their cost.
  • "By the early Renaissance such painted depictions of saints and miracles fell out of favour, particularly in Protestant lands.[19] Under Catholic influence, the blind and poor were the recipients of alms, but under Protestant thinking, such good deeds were not thought as any guaranteed way to heaven, and the path one's life took was believed the will of God." - could do with a bit of rewriting and linking; would you mind if I did it?

Johnbod (talk) 17:01, 1 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Bible quote external links: I neither know or can easily find guidelines on quoting from the Bible, but it looks odd that we're linking to an external Bible-quote website rather than to a Wikisource or Wikiquote page or similar. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 18:21, 17 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Apparently there was some discussion on the template at Wikipedia:Citing sources/Bible. I haven't read it through, myself. Curly Turkey (gobble) 21:42, 17 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I still use Bible Gateway, for which there is a special template, & is fine for FA. It has advantages over WikiSource, as you can skip between translations and languages very easily. Why should we prefer WMF projects if they are not the best for readers? Johnbod (talk) 22:26, 17 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Prefiguring the advent of film: Does the painting, from 1568, prefigure the advent of film? OK, Joris Ivens said that "If Bruegel were alive today he would be a film director", but I wouldn't take that seriously. In the lead it reads "The diagonal composition reinforces the off-kilter motion of the six figures falling in progression, a concern with motion that has been seen as prefiguring the advent of film." Bus stop (talk) 04:47, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I guess the statement really needs the context it's given in the body to be meaningful; there it's attributed to the critcs who proposed it, with their rationales. I've dropped it from the lead. Curly Turkey (gobble) 05:16, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

This is a nomination for "featured article". As far as I understand, this is about it being a good article etc. Yet, the justification tells us not about the article, but about the theme of the article "A masterpiece of the Flemish Renaissance and one of Pieter Bruegel the Elder's last paintings, The Blind is notable for it's (sic) unusual, dynamic composition, and may (or may not) contain some kind of political message." Are we deciding based on that or on the qualities of the article? Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 23:14, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I dont like the block formatted poems, espically in the final section. I'm not sure how much they add. The article is excellent overall. Ceoil (talk) 21:32, 21 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Have read through a few times, and now a support [my last issue is not a deal breaker]. Nice work. Ceoil (talk) 22:00, 21 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support from Hamiltonstone. One quibble:

  • "He does not dress them in the peasant clothes that typifies his later work". Should read "He does not dress them in the peasant clothes that typify his later work" i think. But the sentence of course begs the question: what are they wearing, and this is not answered, until it is discussed much later in the article - if this sentence is to stand, it should be followed by something, if biref, about what they are wearing.

Thought the article was otherwise excellent. hamiltonstone (talk) 03:21, 24 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note -- Source review? Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 14:34, 25 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Source review

  • I added a missing ISBN.
  • re: Hagen, Rose-Marie; Hagen, Rainer (2003). "A Downward Path: Pieter Bruegel the Elder: The Blind Leading the Blind 1568". What Great Paintings Say. Taschen. pp. 190–196. ISBN 978-3-8228-1372-0. - this appears to be a section in a book written by the Hagens, not a chapter written by them in an edited volume edited by either them or someone else. So I am not sure what the approach to reference formatting is, that leads to a single chapter being singled out for naming in this reference, but not for any other?
  • There doesn't seem to be a consistent logic to the decision on whether or not to wikilink the names of publishers - some are, some aren't, and one is redlinked.
  • In the section on journal articles there are two by Sullivan. One has the journal name hyperlinked, the other not. One has the journal publisher named, the other not, one has doi and jstor codes, the other not. Can this be rectified?

Otherwise good. hamiltonstone (talk) 11:44, 26 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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