As a break from writing my first paper in several months (about Donatello’s sculpture Mary Magdalen and his relationship to the Medici family) I have decided to update you all on my everyday life, especially now that I’ve gotten the exciting stuff down and my last update was pretty wimpy. So let’s try this again, shall we?
Like I said, I’m writing my first paper for my class, Medici as Patrons of the Arts. It’s a very informative class from a very knowledgeable Professor. You know your teacher knows her stuff when she starts talking about the evidence that she discovered about the Medici. Whoa! Every one of our class sessions so far has been at a museum. We visited the Baptistery (or Chiesa de San Giovanni) to look at the tomb of Pope Giovanni XXIII, built by Donatello and Michelozzo. The tomb—an unusual item to be in a Baptistery—was commissioned by Cosimo de Medici for a friend of the family who had actually been kicked out of his Papacy, but his tomb suggests that he died in Papacy…quite the scandal. At the Branacacci Chapel we saw some beautiful frescoes painted by Fra Filippo Lippi, a friar who ran away to marry a nun but was good friends with the Medici, so he didn’t get in trouble for it. Then there was the Chiesa di San Lorenzo, funded entirely by Cosimo de Medici with a sacristy entirely by Donatello. We also visited the Palazzo de Medici, which had the grandest private chapel I have ever seen with the walls entirely painted in homage to the three Maggi worshipping the Madonna and the birth of Jesus. Other than that, though, a different family had bought the Palazzo during the Baroque period and almost entirely remodeled or else ornamented the original architecture so it was difficult to glean much about where the Medici had actually lived. Then yesterday we visited the Museo di San Marco with all of the friars’ stalls and an incredible number of crucifixion frescoes. I also learned about an interesting conflict between the Franciscans and the Dominicans called the Precious Blood argument. The Dominicans believed that the blood that had split from Christ during the passion stayed on earth and therefore cleansed humanity of original sin. The Franciscans believed that an angel collected every drop of blood spilt from Christ’s body and his blood therefore rose to heaven along with Christ’s body and soul. Apparently it was quite the conflict and I’m interesting in learning more about it. But now I am writing my paper about Donatello’s statue, Mary Magdalen in Penitence which is quite an incredible wooden sculpture. My initial reaction was that it was grotesque, but after gazing at it for a while, I found that it was beautiful and inspiring. Mary’s face looks emaciated and you can even see the skull under her skin (an amazing feat in carved wood!) but her hair is long and luxurious, covering her entire body, although her arms are bare and held in prayer so that you can see her bulging biceps. A woman of great strength even in 1455! I’m digging it, Donatello!
As for Dante—it started out quite interesting and now I’m curious as to where we’re going. It is discussion based but we don’t move very quickly through the cantos. It’s a shame because I find Dante’s Inferno incredibly interesting and filled with symbolism that I need historical context to understand. Although, we’re on Canto XXVIII now and I find that I can only read one canto at a time so that I can let my stomach settle between the different circles of hell—how does one think of such methods of torture?! In two of the earlier cantos I did find some eerily personal connections, especially to my two tattoos (I have a tattoo of a dove on my ankle and the tree of life along my spine). If you’re curious and know me (because these are quite personal connections), feel free to look up Cantos V and XIII. Read them all the way through. I’m not too bothered by it, though, because I also have good Biblical evidence to back up the positive meanings in my tattoos. Anyways, I continue to be captivated by Dante’s language and imagery, though at this point I’m yearning for Paradiso instead of Inferno or Purgatorio.
Finally, my drawing class is getting to be very interesting. We just draw for two hours, three days a week in this new technique. It is called sight-size portraiture which we practice with plaster castes, and then we alter a bit to do figure drawings. The technique basically asks you to place your drawing on an easel so that it is next to the caste that you’re drawing, then step back about three meters so that you can see both of them without moving your eyes. You look at the cast, memorize a detail, then move that to your paper, memorize the mark that you want to make, then stop forward and put the mark on the paper. Step back again, check your mark, repeat. You can imagine how this might be frustrating to someone who had learned an entirely different method of drawing and seeing, but three weeks in and I feel my eyes changing, looking at different things and seeing differently. I’m quite proud of how my caste drawing of Mr. Dante is coming. I will have finished it tomorrow, but here are some shots of my drawing after day two (when I was convinced that I was drawing Darth Vadar) and day four.
For the figure drawings, we only had three days to complete it so my progress is not quite as noticeable. Nevertheless, here are photos of that figure drawing. Keep in mind that when you are drawing from a caste, it never moves; whereas a living model needs to breathe and will never take exactly the same pose after break or on the second and third days of drawing. That being said, look at these drawings and just think about the progress I might make in the next six weeks! At least, that’s the optimistic spin I’m putting on things. Alright, enough dilly-dallying…here we go.
Alright, now I should probably study for my Italian test tomorrow…the last day of class before fall break! If all goes well, you shall have a post from Assisi before I fly off to London for the week. A dopo!
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