Monday is Art Appreciation day and this week's subject was Michelangelo. I have been using the book Discovering Great Artists to find projects for us and combining those projects with the Art Appreciation Lessons from Garden of Praise. A print of Michelangelo's Pieta and the famous scene from the Sistine Chapel, Creation of Adam, will be going in our Book of Masterpieces joining prints from Raphael and Manet, who we studied previously.
We studied some of Michelangelo's works, especially the Pieta. I was surprised to read that Michelangelo considered himself a sculptor foremost, not a painter. It was quite astounding to look at David and the Pieta and realize that they started out as hunks of unfinished marble.
I did not realize that the Pieta was a specific subject of Christian Art, often sculpture, that of Mary holding a crucified Jesus. I had always thought that term was specific to the one piece by Michelangelo, of course his piece is iconic of that style. Michelangelo's piece is unique in that his representation of Mary is rather youthful. It is also unique from all of Michelangelo's other sculptures in that it is his only sculpture that is signed.
We also enjo
yed looking at the beautiful paintings of Michelangelo as well. It was amazing to consider that he did so much work lying on his back for the Sistine Chapel, all told he painted 12,000 sq. ft of ceiling there. We were however very sad to read that he suffered vision loss as a result of this work(from the paint and plaster which fell into his eyes).
In honor of Michelangelo we did some painting of our own, following the book Discovering Great Artists. I taped some butcher paper under the kid's table and they each took turns being great artists.
Luke wanted to keep his simple. We recently were learning about mixing colors together and the new colors they form. His 'inspired' piece is called Angels. Lily's piece above, well, she is 3 and she had fun smearing a bunch of paint around- and then said, "Can I do it again?"
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