This year we decided to learn more about the sources of some of the festivals that we celebrate.
We looked at how the Christmas story has been presented through the ages (most prominently during the Renaissance period) through great art, by looking at the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art online, as well as by taking the Nativities Trail at the National Gallery (the online tour is here). The story is well represented in the following books we borrowed from the library - one with paintings from the medieval illuminated manuscripts, the other with paintings from the renaissance period:
Now that we have a good idea of how the Christmas story has been presented from an artistic and religious point of view, we decided to learn about the historical sources of the festival, as we have done back in October with finding out where Halloween had come from
We decided to go and see Titian's exhibition at TheNational Gallery before it ended. It was an interesting exhibition, very different from the ones we have visited in the past, in that this one consisted of various collaborations acorss different artistic fields (poetry, dance, drama, and visual arts), so we were in for a visual feast. The visit was interesting for Tiger to see how Greek Mythology has inspired so many different forms of artistic interpretations.
Since the exhibition was based on Ovid's epic poem, Metamophoses, Tiger read a retold version of it to get a better understanding of the themes of the exhibition. Most of the stories in the poem were known to him from previous readings of other versions of Greek myths, but I like this particular version for its beautiful (and somewhat scarily realistic) illustrations and the author's attempt to stay true to Ovid's original cyclical poetic style in a few of the stories.
Again, we had our mini-gallery-on-the-cupboard-door at home, with Titian's work posted on it for the month, so that Tiger could look at them from time to time and be ready to narrate and discuss them during one of our art sessions together.
Alongside narration and the gallery visit, we did some research at home using the BBC Your Painting site as well as a few books.
Give Titian is known for his realistic portaits, it is very difficult to expect a child to create an art piece in that style so I asked Tiger to create as realistically as possible, a heroic figure of his choice. He took five minutes to complete the assignment. So much for following in the footsteps of the Old Masters! The drawing is full of character though.
'Fra' is actually a term meaning 'Brother', since Angelico was a monk as well as a master artist in the early Renaissance period. I must admit that I am not overly excited by religious paintings, but they were the main types of art work produced for hundreds of years when the Church was a part of everyday life so it makes sense for us to learn something about it.
Picture Study
The first place I go for artist study is BBC Your Painting site. It is very relevant to me because this site lists the art works that are held in the British art museums and galleries. Even so, there is not much information on Fra Angelico there, although we did spend some time looking at the paintings there, and discussing about the prevalent style, symbolism, and the use of Biblical stories in the Middle Ages.
After the generic introduction, we focused on a specific painting, The Adoration of the Magi, for further exploration and discussion. The online tour of this piece of art work, used together with the accompanying notes, was very helpful in this regard.
However, we still did not know much about Fra Angelico until we watched the following two clips:
Hands-on activity The only thing that Tiger found exciting about the art pieces in this period was the use of gold leaf to highlight significant figures in the paintings. The suggested activity in Discovering Great Artists was to use 'silver leaf', a.k.a. alumnimum foil.
Tiger first sketched his picture on a black card with a pencil. I suggested to him to make a big drawing so that he would have enough room for the foil. He decided to draw the head of a holyman, so that he could use the foil as halo around the man's head.
Once the sketch was done, it was time to glue the aluminium foil onto the card where the halo was going to be, followed by painting the rest of the picture.
The end result turned out to be something very different from what I was expecting to see, but Tiger was happy with how his work turned out. I thought (to myself) that the final result seemed more appropriate as an Expressionist work than an early Renaissance work, but as long as the artist himself is satisfied with his own creation, I do not feel I should criticise his creative efforts. Afterall, I may not fare any better if I were to do it myself.
This post is linked up to several blog hops, where you can visit to see what other homeschoolers have been busy with. It is also linked up to Homeschool Showcase #90.
