Adoration of the Child

Besides landscape painting, the students this summer could choose between Renaissance art history or Italian. Obviously, being a mere 35 minutes from  the center of the Renaissance at Florence, most of the students chose art history. Renaissance is the specialty of Mark Aeschliman who taught the course and the field trips were first class. Nothing dry or dull about this class except that one could get a little tired of seeing so many Madonnas! Rider and I, as I have divulged , tagged along.

After looking at so much religious art, Mike Fullerton, another of the cohorts, suggested that the group recreate ( with his Photoshop manipulation) their own version of a Renaissance "Adoration of the Child".  This adoration would be complete with the saints, angels,  martyrs and an adoring madonna plus our own Rider as the baby. Mike assembled the group at dusk with the Tuscan landscape as the backdrop. Participants brought along bedsheets, strips of cloth, bedspreads and such with which to drape themselves. The Renaissance artists unabashedly painted religious subjects dressed much in current style or looking like Tuscan people thus a blond, blue eyed Jesus wasn't stretching it too much. Also it was not unusual for the artist to paint himself in the picture gazing out at whomever would be looking at the picture. Therefore, Mike is pictured as St. Sebastian and is looking out seemingly not in much pain from all the arrows!

Could a grandmother be more proud than to have her daughter and her grandson depict Jesus and his mother? This is even better than a Christmas pageant!