Olympics in Torino!
The Olympics are going on, right now, in Italy, and I, of course, am also in Italy, so I decided that I would find a way to get there, An 8 hour and twenty minute overnight train ride later, I found myself in Torino! I went to a hockey game and watched the Russians let out a can of whoop ass, and then I wandered around the city of Torino. I saw a fireworks display, and spent hours in the Sponsors Olympic Village collecting free samples, drinking (also free) hot chocolate, trying out simulated snowboarding and luge games, and ice skating in a rink they'd set up as they projected the live ice dancing competition right next to it! They even had a place to try out curling (the hilarious shuffleboard on ice game). How rad is that?! It was such an amazing experience and I'm so glad I had the opportunity to go.
Spolia
Spolia, from the Latin term meaning spoils, is used in the art historical sense to refer to architectural and ornamental elements that were taken from their original space and reused in another context. Rome has a great tradition of using spolia. Indeed, many of the columns and marble in medieval and Renaissance churches were originally part of some Late Antique or Byzantine buildings, that were in turn, taken from temples and palaces of Classical Rome.
It is in this spirit of spolia that I decided to cut up some of my old prints and collage them with a drawing to create a new piece.
The second, orange work is also a reuse of sorts-- the same plate used to print the green high jumper piece has been printed again, in orange, and I've collaged another figure on it.
Piero della Francesca pilgramage
Yesterday the five graduate students and our advisor took a day trip to Arezzo and Sansepolcra, two small Tuscan hill town that were home to Renaissance painter Piero della Francesca, and that still house many of his masterpieces. First we went to San Francesco, which has the best preserved fresco by Piero in the world. It recounts the "Golden Legend," a 13th Century text about the Holy Cross.
The story tells how Adam, on his deathbed, sends his his son Seth to Archangel Michael for a holy oil. Michael instead gives him some seedlings from the tree of Knowledge to be placed in his father's mouth at the moment of his death. The tree that grows on Adam's is chopped down by King Solomon and its wood is thrown across a stream to serve as a bridge. The Queen of Sheba, on her journey to see Solomon and hear his words of wisdom, is about to cross the stream, but then has a prophetic vision that the Messiah will be crucified on the wood of that bridge. She kneels in devout adoration. When Solomon discovers the nature of the divine message received by the Queen of Sheba, he orders that the bridge be removed and the wood, which will cause the end of the kingdom of the Jews, be buried. But, of course, the wood is found and, after a second premonitory message, becomes the instrument of the Passion.
Three hundred years later, the Roman Emperor Constantine is told in a dream that he must fight in the name of the Cross to overcome his enemy. After Constantine's victory his mother Helena travels to Jerusalem to recover the miraculous wood. No one knows where the relic of the Cross is, except a man, Judas. Judas is tortured in a well and confesses that he knows the temple where the three crosses of Calvary are hidden. Helena orders that the temple be destroyed; the three crosses are found and the True Cross is recognized because it causes the miraculous resurrection of a dead youth. In the year 615, the Persian Kin Chosroes steals the wood, setting it up as an object of worship. The Eastern Emperor Heraclius wages war on the Persian King and, having defeated him, returns to Jerusalem with the Holy Wood. But a divine power prevents the emperor from making his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. So Heraclius, setting aside all pomp and magnificence, enters the city carrying the Cross in a gesture of humility, following Jesus Christ's example.
It's interesting how the story weaves historically accurate events with fiction, Constantine does fight in a war and overcome his enemy, but, although he later legalizes Christianity and becomes Christian, at the time, Christianity is not his religion. His mother does go on a pilgramage to the holy land, and returns with a fragment of the holy cross. Indeed, a church dedicated to the Holy Cross was built in Rome after she returned with the fragment. However, she had nothing to do with the cross' discovery.
It's also quite fascinating to think that all of the people depicted in the fresco are not Piero's contemporaries, and yet they have been dressed as such. The people who saw this fresco at mass each week saw people in it costumed exactly like themselves, as if this was a battle they had just fought and continue to fight, It's a very modern concept.
The pictures are of the fresco in San Francesco, il Duomo, its architecture and Piero's Maria Magdalena that is housed there, and me, in front of the Tuscan landscape.
