Illusions

The painting above wowed and amazed the people of Renaissance Florence.  It is a fresco (a painting completed on wet plaster) by the young artist Masaccio and is the first painting to use the newly discovered linear perspective.  Many people saw this painting on the wall of a church in Florence and thought that it was an extension into another room.  Masaccio used linear perspective and shadowing of light and dark on the figures to create his illusion of depth.  Masaccio was such a talented artist that it is rumored that he was poisoned!  The competitive art world of Florence, Italy may have been too jealous of his talent.

Our class worked on a scene that created the same illusion of a deep space.  Using different values and complimentary colors, we added shadows to flat circles to make them appear to be round spheres.

We then drew checkerboards using linear perspective, painted the background black, and added stars to make the illusion of infinite space.

Finally, we arranged the spheres so the largest were the lowest on the page, also adding to the illusion of depth.

Ghirberti and Figure Drawing

Continuing our study of Renaissance artists, we looked at the life and work of Lorenzo Ghirberti.  Ghirberti was a trained goldsmith who entered a contest to design a set of doors for the Baptistry at the cathedral in Florence, Italy.  His design won and he spent years completing the doors. 

When Michelangelo saw the completed set, he named them the "Gates of Paradise".  

The panels on the doors show scenes from the Old Testament.  However, the sculpted human figures are proportional, realistic, and Classically dressed.  Ghiberti, like other Renaissance artists, merged the ideas of the Medieval period (Christianity) with Greek and Roman ideas (humanism and an emphasis on the human body).

We began our project by discussing the proportions of the human body.

Students also took turns posing for one another and doing figure drawing.

We took our drawings and created scenes using textures (rice, beans, pasta, dried glue) to build images using a human figure on foam board.

We covered the foam board with foil and carefully pressed the foil around the textures until you could see the image in the foil.

Finally, we covered our foil wrapped images with India ink and used steel wool to buff away the ink from the raised places on the image.

In the end, we got some pretty cool relief sculptures!