Spanish artist Jose Manuel Ballester recreates classic paintings — such as Goya’s “The Third of May 1808”, Vermeer’s “The Allegory of Painting”, and Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus” — removing all the people from them to showcase the hidden spaces behind.
At first sight the whole series can inspire some humour, but after a deeper look it’s not difficult to find transcendence and the multiple possible interpretations, both as new images and as related to their original counterparts. One of the clearest aspects in this series is the way we can understand art from the point of view of each period, which has a unique way of looking and understanding reality shared by artists, who develop their creativity inside those period’s values and connect with ideas and universal precepts extended in time.
Jose Manuel Ballester
More info: Website, Instagram (h/t Bored Panda).
Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” (1498)
Diego Velázquez’s “Las Meninas” (1656)
Sandro Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus” (1486)
Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica” (1937)
Francisco Goya’s “The Third of May 1808” (1814)
Théodore Géricault’s “The Raft of Medusa” (1819)
Jan Vermeer’s “The Allegory of Painting” (1668)
