PROFANE
ANDRÉ DURAND Twenty-First Century Paintings
Source
The picture Rubens painted of The Consequences of War for Ferdinand de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany made an indelible impression on Durand and there are echoes of the Rubens’ masterpiece in his treatment of the same subject. Rubens’ horrific message is exceptionally pessimistic: even love cannot restrain the blind martial brutality of the Thirty Years War from plunging Europe into mourning and chaos.
The War in Bosnia and Herzegovina, an international armed conflict that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between April 1992 and December 1995 inspired Durand’s dark, harrowing vision set in front of the bridge at Mostar of the horrors of fratricidal war. The young man’s head (an actual portrait of a suicide bomber) propped in a salver of blood in the foreground seems incongruously serene.
However, paradoxically, such tragic subject matter, did not prevent Durand or Rubens from portraying these scenes of brutality in the most Titianesque spirit, as a perfect demonstrations of chromatic harmony.
Peter Paul Rubens
The Consequences of War 1637-38
Palazzo Pitti, Firenze
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/04/27/opinion/main691349.shtml