Labor of love

Labor of love

Amidst all the hype about post-everythingness in the art world, from cooking up Carvaggio's with spaghetti to Leonardo's with chocolate syrup, a rinascimento of all'antica method and iconography could be just what cyber-age skeptics need to revive faith in painting. Call it traditional, even old

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Thu 26 Feb 2009 1:00 AM

Amidst all the
hype about post-everythingness in the art world, from cooking up Carvaggio’s
with spaghetti to Leonardo’s with chocolate syrup, a rinascimento of all’antica method and iconography could be just what cyber-age skeptics need to revive faith
in painting. Call it traditional, even old school, but eight Florentine women, the
self-proclaimed Association Tabula Picta, in cooperation with the Sant’Ambrogio
Parish, are doing just that in a week-long exhibition, Mostra d’Arte Sacra, in
Palazzo di Parte Guelfa, in the historical center of Florence, February 28 to
March 5th.

 

At this exhibit
you will find a reworking of the art of painting with tempera, a technique
renowned among the ancients, preserved by monastic orders during the early Middle
Ages until its revival in the thirteenth century, reinvented throughout the
Renaissance,L but dismissed in the sixteenth century. Recently, preservationists
have begun offering tempera method workshops in keeping with the monastic
traditions.

 

For Tabula
Picta, working in tempera is a labor of love. The ancient method is not easy.
The term tempera refers to the material used to paint wooden panels or
the like. Making it involves an arduous layering process of egg and translucent
pigment and is repeated frequently in small batches because of the egg’s quick-drying
properties. The egg yolk is a binding agent for the minerals that provide the
color.

 

The tempera is
applied in countless minute brushstrokes in a cross-hatching technique that is,
once complete, coated in varnish that intensifies the colors into jewel-like
tones. The ancients used earth and stone materials to create color, while Renaissance
artists became more inventive, using even blood. One must think only of Caravaggio
(not the spaghetti version) to understand the potentially violent extent of
color experimentation.  

 

The eight women
in Tabula Picta first joined forces during a tempera course they took together 10
years ago. After the course, the women resolved to start a painting group. Giovanna
Pieri, retired art teacher and member of Tabula Picta, who has been
photographing, drawing portraits, and painting with oil for as long as she can
remember (a path  that lead her to the
Liceo Artistico di Firenze, thought scandalous for women to attend in the 1950s),
recalls when the group first decided to get together. ‘We did not want to give
up our newly found craft so we decided to get together to paint,’ she recounts.

 

Since 1997,
they have created countless pieces and mounted several exhibits. The group, now
sponsored by Florence culture superintendent Eugenio Giani, focuses on
religious iconography, making copies of historical works such as Botticelli’s Madonna
and Child as well as modern interpretations of Biblical episodes, such as
Cain’s murder of Abel.

 

Whether seeking
religious inspiration, local artistic talent, or even your very own new-but-seemingly-old
panel of a Madonna and Child or the Archangel Michael, discover the Association
of Tabula Picta at the Mostra d’Arte Sacra.

 

 

 

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