Cimabue – Giotto – Duccio

by with No Comment RenaissanceStudent ActivitiesWorksheets

Cimabue – Giotto – Duccio, how important are they? You simply have to visit the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Hall 2 to be more specific, stand in front of these three monumental panels and allow their masters to take you on a trip to the late 13th, early 14th century revolutionary Italian Painting.

According to Giorgio Vasari,“…instead of paying attention to his literary studies, Cimabue, as if inspired by his nature, spent the whole day drawing men, horses, houses and various other fantasies in his books and papers.” Cenni di Pepo, known as Cimabue, is recognized as the last painter of the Italo-Byzantine style. Yet. he is credited to step forward in moving his art towards achieving the first hint of naturalism, paving the way for the next generation of great Italian masters.

O vanity of human powers, how briefly lasts the crowning green of glory, unless an age of darkness follows! In painting Cimabue thought he held the field but now it’s Giotto has the cry, so that the other’s fame is dimmed. Writes about Giotto, the poet Dante in Canto XI of his Purgatorio, and he is so right. Giotto creates “a new kind of pictorial space with an almost measurable depth” and figures that are “volumetric rather than linear” expressing “varied and convincingly human rather than stylized” emotions. Justifiably, Giotto is considered the father of modern European painting. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/iptg/hd_iptg.htm

“Duccio, painter of Siena and much esteemed, deserved to carry off the palm (of an inventor in the Arts) from those who came many years after him…” writes Giorgio Vasari in his book The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. Today, Duccio Duccio is considered to bring through his art elegance, lyricism, and spirituality along with spatial complexity and refined use of colours.

There are two Uffizi Gallery sites you simply need to visit: https://www.visituffizi.org/halls/hall-2-of-giotto-and-the-13th-century/ and https://www.virtualuffizi.com/13th-century-and-giotto-room.html

For a student Activity, my Grade 9 Art History students enjoy… click HERE!

A PowerPoint on the three Madonnas is… HERE!

Telling us goodbye…

by with No Comment Ancient Greek ArtPowerpointsStudent Activities

They were young and charming, elegant and playful yet sad as they were Telling us Goodbye…

Two of my favourite Ancient Greek Funerary Stele depict a young girl holding a Bird (in the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki) or in the case of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, two Birds. Both Stelae were made of Parian marble, around 440 BC.

The Funerary Stele in Thessaloniki “depicts a girl wearing a peplos and holding a dove by its wings with her left hand, while the right one lifts the edge of her garment, to reveal her body.” It is characterized by the superb quality of craftsmanship, a subtle sense of movement, and controlled emotions. Undoubtedly, it occupies a central part in the history of ancient Greek sculpture.

“The gentle gravity of this child is beautifully expressed through her sweet farewell to her pet doves. Her peplos is unbelted and falls open at the side, while the folds of drapery clearly reveal her stance…” The Metropolitan Museum Funerary Stele is the work of a great master sculptor, an artist who manages to enhance the white, translucent Parian marble by creating a “charming composition and delicate carving.”

Both Funerary Stelae grace with their beauty the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki (https://www.amth.gr/en/exhibitions/highlights and scroll down to ” Relief Funerary Stele from Nea Kallikrateia”) and the MET in New York ( https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/252890 ).

If you choose to use this Activity for your class, Grade 6 Social Studies or an Introductory Middle School class on Ancient Greek Art, it will be also nice to show Adam Fuss (the Photographer) discussing the MET Marble Grave Stele of a little girl.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art – THE ARTIST PROJECT Video http://artistproject.metmuseum.org/4/adam-fuss/

Examples of student RWAP (stands for Research-Writing-Art-Project) Sketchbooks… HERE!

Telling us Goodbye RWAP (stands for Research-Writing-Art-Project) is… HERE!

The Magic of the Olive Tree

by with No Comment Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation AthensPost-ImpressionismPowerpointsStudent Activities
Vincent Van Gogh, 1853-1890
Olive Picking, 1889, oil on canvas, 73.5 × 92.5 cm, Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation, Athens

The Magic of the Olive Tree inspired so much Vincent Van Gogh that while in Saint-Remy-de Provence in 1889, he painted at least 15 paintings depicting their beauty! The same magic inspired our wonderful Pinewood Kindergarten Teacher… who organized a Unit to remember!

“The Kindergarten theme on Olives began with the intention of it being a transdisciplinary unit so that the children would learn many facets about it. It was introduced in a simple way – when the children reached the letter O in the English alphabet they decided to remember this letter sound by saying ‘O is for olive’… From there they learned that olives are fruit and that they grow on Olive Trees in Greece. Inspired by short videos showing how olives are picked in late Autumn, the children took a sheet, a stick and a basket and went olive picking on the school grounds. They hit the branches of the school Olive Trees and collected the fruit that fell… So enthusiastic about what they did they decided to capture their experience by making their very own olive tree grove Bulletin Board.”

Pinewood Kindergarten students “listened in awe as they travelled back into mythological times, to when Athena bestowed the gift of an Olive Tree to the Athenians. This helped the children understand what a treasure the Olive Tree is because of all the various gifts that it gives: wood (for heat, furniture), oil ( for cooking, eating, light, fuel) and soap… They tasted both green and black olives, they washed their hands with olive soap, they lit an oil-lamp with olive oil and they made olive bread… They created olive wreaths by counting card leaves and plasticine olives to a given number and learned that in ancient times an olive wreath, just like the ones they had made, were placed on the heads of champion athletes.”

Finally, students “realized how thankful they are for this humble fruit and all it provides. So when it came to Thanksgiving Day the children chose to honour the Olive Tree by writing their messages of thanks inside their olive wreaths and entitling their display, ‘In Greece, we are thankful for Olive Trees’.”

Kindergarten student Bulletin Board Art photographed by Kostas Papantoniou

“O is for Olive” is the amazing Lesson Plan prepared by the school’s Kindergarten Teacher, Mrs. Anna Maria Mathias, with assistance provided by Mrs. Kathy Lekkas. The PowerPoint photos that follow HERE! were taken by the school’s photographer, Mr. Kostas Papapatoniou.

For the purposes of this BLOG, The Magic of the Olive Tree, “teachercurator” put together a PowerPoint on Van Gogh and paintings of Olive Trees… please check HERE!

The new Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation in Athens has a wonderful Vincent Van Gogh painting of Olive Picking from his 1889 period. Apparently, Van Gogh painted “three versions of this picture. He described the first as a study from nature “more coloured with more solemn tones” (in the Goulandris Collection) and the second as a studio rendition in a “very discreet range” of colours (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.).” The third painting is at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and accordingly is “the most resolved and stylized of the three.” The third painting was “intended for his sister and mother, to whom Van Gogh wrote: “I hope that the painting of the women in the olive trees will be a little to your taste—I sent [a] drawing of it to Gauguin… and he thought it good… ” https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436536 and https://goulandris.gr/en/artwork/vincent-van-gogh-olive-picking

“Bourgeois” Portrait

by with No Comment ArtBasil and Elise Goulandris Foundation AthensStudent Activities

Your tour of the new Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation in Athens should start from the 4th floor… recommends the helpful Museum operator, and I hesitantly followed his recommendation. I was pleasantly surprised! An impressive “Bourgeois” Portrait of Basil and Elise Goulandris welcomed me, setting the tone for what I was about to experience.

Painted four years after Basil Goulandris’s passing, this eye-catching Portrait of the famous art collectors by George Rorris introduces you to the “atmosphere” that prevails in the latest cultural addition to the Athens Museum circuit! It’s grand, elegant yet understated. Basil Goulandris, clad in a dark suit, stands tall and aloof, staring at you intensely. Elise on the other hand, wearing the softest of pink, sits charmingly on an armchair and looks beyond you. They are surrounded by three favourite paintings from their legendary collection and a mirror that holds a secret worth exploring!

Little information is unfortunately provided by the Foundation on the “whats, the hows and the whys” of this painting. I hope, as time progresses, part of their “Permanent Collection” site will get richer with short descriptions and information on each and every one of their paintings. https://goulandris.gr/en/collection/works-of-art and https://goulandris.gr/en/artwork/rorris-george-portrait-of-basil-and-elise-goulandris

Basil and Elise Goulandris were known for their passionate love of the arts. They were avid collectors, famous for their superb “taste” and acute “eye.” ‘I spent months at a time with Basil and Elise when I was a child,’ says Fleurette Karadontis ‘they had no children of their own — they looked on the paintings as their children. The works were a genuine presence in their lives, a constant part of the conversation. Basil might suddenly say: look there, I never realised that the colour of the shirt in that painting is the same as the wall behind that still life. Or he would look at some cubist painting and ask: how many people do you see in it because I think there are three.’ https://www.christies.com/features/A-gift-to-Greece-the-Goulandris-Foundation-10209-1.aspx

For High School level student Activities on the George Rorris “Bourgeois” Portrait of Basil and Elise Goulandris… Click HERE!

Medusa

by with No Comment BaroqueStudent Activities
Elementary level student work

Medusa was once upon a time an entrancing maiden, the only mortal sister of the three Gorgons, attractive for her beauty originally, feared as an image of evil later, when Athena’s anger turned her into a hideous monster… According to the Roman Poet Ovid (Metamorphoses 4.770), Athena was so fierce in her punishment, Medusa’s hair was transformed into venomous snakes, and her once lovely face, looked upon, petrified the viewer.

To save his mother Danae from the much-unwanted attention of king Polydectes of Seriphos, young Perseus was tasked with the impossible, killing Medusa. Perseus, however, was not alone and helpless in his adventure. He carried with him divine gifts, Athena’s mirrored shield, Hermes’s gold, winged sandals, Hephaestus’s adamantine sword and Hades’s helmet of invisibility. According to Ovid Perseus was successful, Medusa head was cut and ultimately ended up in Athena’s Aegis.

“Medusa in Ancient Greek Art” is a Metropolitan Museum of Art article worth reading: https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/medu/hd_medu.htm

“flee, for if your eyes are petrified in amazement, she will turn you to stone,” wrote Gaspare Mustola, an Italian poet and writer of the 17th century, and Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio painted the most amazing Medusa head of all time!

Caravaggio, 1571-1610
Medusa, 1597, oil on canvas mounted on wood, 60 cm × 55 cm, Uffizi, Florence

My Grade 3 students love the terrifying Myth of the Medusa and creating a Mask is always a successful Activity! The best Mask by far is offered by the Cleveland Museum of Art… which I use every year with student enthusiasm and great success! https://www.clevelandart.org/sites/default/files/documents/other/MakeaMaskofMedusa.pdf

For a PowerPoint on the student Mask Activity… check HERE!

Leonardo da Vinci

by with No Comment NewsPowerpointsRenaissance
La Belle Ferronnière (detail), 1495 – 1499, oil on wood, 62 cm × 44 cm, Louvre Museum, Paris Photo Copyright: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50127095
…and her mesmerizing eyes

Five hundred years ago, one of the greatest Renaissance Homo Universalis passed away at the Château du Clos Lucé, in the Loire Valley. The Louvre Museum, wishing to commemorate the fifth centenary of the artist’s death, organizes an International Retrospective Exhibition on Leonardo da Vinci and his oeuvre. https://www.louvre.fr/en/expositions/leonardo-da-vinci

The Louvre Museum in Paris holds the largest collection in the world of the artist’s paintings, five of the fourteen to seventeen paintings now attributed to Leonardo, as well as 22 drawings. This collection is the core of the Retrospective that will also present “the latest research findings, critical editions of key documents and the results of the latest analysis carried out in laboratories or during recent conservation treatment by the Louvre.” https://www.louvre.fr/en/leonardo-da-vinci

A unique feature that the Exhibition presents to its visitors is the Virtual Reality experience for the Mona Lisa painting, the first of its kind at the Louvre. Virtual Reality enables visitors to go through the glass-case that protects the Mona Lisa and see minute details within the painting invisible otherwise to the naked eye. https://arts.vive.com/us/articles/projects/art-photography/mona_lisa_beyond_the_glass/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au_UpzhzHwk

The PowerPoint I use for my Art History class on the artist… is HERE!

Reverence for Nature and Tiffany

by with No Comment American ArtArt NouveauJewelryStudent ActivitiesWorksheets
Tiffany’s Incredible Hair Pin

Reverence for Nature and Tiffany is my latest BLOG Post. It is about an extraordinary Hair Ornament in the MET Collection portraying two Dragonflies and Dandelions. Created in 1904 for Louisine Havemeyer, a great collector of Impressionist Art and one of Tiffany’s most ardent patrons, the Metropolitan Museum Hair Pin is my favourite Art Nouveau piece of Jewelry. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/2046

When I think of Louis Comfort Tiffany, I think of nature’s power, its brittleness, yet joy. I think of radiance, luminosity and brilliance in colour. I think of superb craftsmanship… as exemplified in the MET’s Dragonfly and Dandelion Hair Ornament. According to Alice Cooney Frelinghuyse in the MET, the Hair Ornament “epitomizes his earliest jewelry designs, which were based directly on modest forms in nature, such as field flowers and wild fruit, as well as his affinity for enamelling and semiprecious stones with unusual colors. The dragonflies rest on dandelion seedballs, one of which is shown partially blown away, underscoring the fragility of nature. Highly skilled artisans conveyed the transparency of the insects’ wings through delicate metalwork filigree. The temporal quality is revealed in the subject: dragonflies rest in one place for mere seconds before flitting away; dandelions disperse into thousands of airborne seeds with the gentlest of breezes.” file:///C:/Users/aspil/Downloads/Recent_Acquisitions_A_Selection_2002_2003_The_Metropolitan_Museum_of_Art_Bulletin_v_61_no_2_Fall_2003%20(1).pdf

For a short PowerPoint on Louis Comfort Tiffany… click HERE!

A Grade 4 or 5 student Activity on Reverence for Nature and Tiffany is HERE!

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/2002.620/

I am… How I see myself

by with No Comment Ancient Greek ArtCycladic ArtNews

I am… How I see myself is the new 2020, Athens Museum of Cycladic Art student contest. It’s a wonderful tradition that humbly started back in 2013, and today, 7 years later, counts more than 23,000 students participants. This year the Museum “invites children aged 4-15 years (preschool, grade school, and junior high school) to take inspiration from a Cypriot bronze mirror dating to 1200-1050 BC and displayed on the Museum’s third floor Cyprus – Ancient Art and Culture section.” The Museum of Cycladic Art asks students “to present themselves to the world as they see themselves, starting with a mirror.” https://cycladic.gr/en/paidikos-diagonismos

Back in 2017, the Museum’s young friends, aged 4-12 were invited to take part in a drawing competition titled “See the Stattuete Differently.” Students were to be inspired by a Cypriot Board-like Stattuete of the 2nd Millenium BC.

My Grade 4 Social Studies students, along with their wonderful teacher Ms. Alexia M., responded wholeheartedly. We joined forces to take part in this competition. Students used the Museum’s “Figurine” Template, crayons, markers, coloured papers, newspapers, cloth or beads, feathers… their vivid imagination and we sent 20 figurines transformed into “American Heroes”!

Over 15.000 students from all over Greece participated, but the works of only 398 students were awarded with distinction. Pinewood’s Grade 4 student, Sofia P. was one of them and we are still sincerely proud!

This year’s Contest I am… How I see myself is a new challenge we will jointly face with Pinewood’s talented Art Teacher Mrs. Fiona G. Needless to say… I am excited!!!

Stay tuned…

Renaissance Triptych… fresh

by with No Comment ArtRenaissanceStudent Activities
Duccio di Buoninsegna, Sienese, c. 1255 – 1318
The Nativity with the Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel, a component of the original Maestà, 1308/1311, tempera on a single panel, NGA, Washington, DC

Renaissance Triptych… fresh is a RWAP (Research-Writing-Art-Project) designed for my high school elective class on Art History. It touches upon Sienese 14th century Art, Duccio, the great master of the time, his most important oeuvre, the Maestà altarpiece, and Triptych Icons.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines Triptych as “a picture (such as an altarpiece) or carving in three panels side by side.” It further defines Triptych as having Greek roots. “Triptych derives from the Greek triptychos (“having three folds”), formed by combining tri- (“three”) and ptychē (“fold” or “layer”),” and it continues “although triptych originally described a specific type of Roman writing tablet that had three hinged sections, it is not surprising that the idea was generalized first to a type of painting, and then to anything composed of three parts.” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/triptych

Wonderful information on Duccio’s Maestà can be accessed at https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.10.html and basically https://www.nga.gov/collection/highlights/duccio-the-nativity-with-the-prophets-isaiah-and-ezekiel.html

“On the day on which it was carried to the Duomo, the shops were locked up . . . and all the populace and all the most worthy were in order next to the said panel with lights lit in their hands, and then behind were women and children with much devotion; and they accompanied it right to the Duomo . . . sounding all the bells in glory out of devotion for such a noble panel as was this.” Anonymous mid-14th-century description of a procession to carry Duccio’s Maestà from the artist’s studio to the Siena Cathedral (L. A. Muratori, Rerum italiarum scriptores (Bologna, 1931–1939), xv/6, 90

The Renaissance Triptych… fresh RWAP is… HERE!

For a PP on Student work inspired by Renaissance Triptych… fresh RWAP, please… check HERE!

Thank you Brother Peter

by with No Comment News

Thank you Brother Peter Tabichi for shaking me up, reminding me of my goals, aspirations and visions as a teacher. I owe another thank you to my dear colleague Christina P. for bringing this BBC News article to my attention: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47658803?fbclid=IwAR2rtKb_p6KKyhHV_9IijHcu6PM6Qtpr-LRaBw00iYh1tjResM1S6i0newE.

Brother Peter is a Franciscan monk and science teacher at the Keriko Mixed Day Secondary School in Pwani Village, Nakuru, Kenya, with a vision. “He wants pupils to see ‘science is the way to go’ for their futures.” Brother Peter is a doer. He gives away 80% of his salary to support his pupils, but “it’s not all about money,” he says. It’s about raising aspirations, comprehending the essence and importance of science for development, not just in Kenya but across Africa.

While facing “challenges with a lack of facilities,” not enough books or teachers, overcrowded classrooms of 70 or 80 students, the lack of a reliable internet connection, pupils who walk more than 6km to reach the school, he believes that “Africa’s young people will no longer be held back by low expectations. Africa will produce scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs whose names will one day be famous in every corner of the world. And girls will be a huge part of this story.”

How does Brother Peter achieve the many challenges he faces? He works hard persuading the local community and his students’ families to recognize the value of education. The majority of his students face serious problems, but he visits families at home and persuades them not to let their boys drop out of school, and in cases of girls, not to get them married at an early age. In my humble opinion, Father Peter truly CARES!

Brother Peter is the recipient of the 2019 Varkey Foundation Global Teacher Award https://www.varkeyfoundation.org/. He happily said “It’s morning in Africa. The skies are clear. The day is young and there is a blank page waiting to be written. This is Africa’s time” https://www.globalteacherprize.org/winners/peter-tabichi/

For a wonderful video that further enhances this post on Thank you Brother Peter, please see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4kl6b2D0MY

Brother Peter, you make me wonder… how can we get back a little bit of your passion and drive in our privileged world of “high-end,” fortunate, expensive, highly technological educational system? Much can be improved, I believe, “in the rotten state of Denmark”…