Author: Adrian (Page 1 of 2)

Colby College’s campus is designed and physically composed in a classic New England fashion. When driving through, it can be easily seen how the buildings on campus radiate from the central Miller Library. Professor. Plesch pointed out that this was primarily due to the library being the first building to be built on Mayflower Hill. 

Coming from three sides of the library are three rows: Miller Lawn, Frat Row, and the Chapel. Miller Lawn is the largest out of these three and is home to many of the campus’s academic buildings. It intersects with a road and ends with the admission and alumni centers. The green space in this space is clearly designed for recreational use, with chairs and events being there. The paths throughout this region also intersect with another at angles, as opposed to a grid like system. 

A smaller “row” can be found parallel to the Miller Lawn. Recently renovated, this path runs by the Colby College Museum of Art and eventually meets Frat Row. Miller Lawn is to academics as Frat Row is to residential life. This green space between the buildings is less utilized and at the end of the row is Bobs, a dining hall and dormitory, popular to many. Behind Bobs, the Athletic Center can be found, removed from the rest of campus. I often found myself curious about its distance from the school, but I now suppose it’s due to the large amounts of space needed for athletic fields. 

Finally, in the other direction is the Chapel. While the previous two examples were a row of buildings with grassy areas in between, this direction does not have a large amount of buildings and the Chapel is the center of attention as it perches upon the side of a hill. Behind this region is a more chaotic alignment of buildings, mostly dorms. While the other buildings were in a row formation, these (maybe newer) ones create a quad, known as Dana Lawn. 

As for other details, directly behind the chapel is an area that is small out of necessity due to the presence of Johnson Pond. On the outskirts of campus, parking lots and fieldy areas fill the rest of the space. As I mentioned earlier, I believe this to be due to the large amount of space they take up. 

Today’s class was focused on the architectural makeup of both Colby’s campus and Italian cities. I enjoyed learning about the Florence Cathedral. When looking at and visiting Cathedrals, an important question to ask: is what makes this building holy? I oftentimes find the artistic elements to be a large contributor to religious awe of a space. For instance, the Florence Cathedral was designed in the 13th century and symbolized Giotto’s revival of the dome. This is a spectacular feat for the time period. The dome changes the architecture of the city, as this massive structure towers over Florence. Inside, the cathedral is equally breaktaking. While the ceilings are not filled with art, the scale of the building is very impressive. I intend to be more deliberate with my use of space in the upcoming exhibition.

This week I found the shift in art purchasing patterns to be fascinating. The Renaissance brought a new way in which patrons bought work. In particular, the market became more open, allowing for more artistic freedoms. Furthermore, the name of the artists started to be valued higher, which in turn led to an increase in competition between rivals. This shift marks the beginning of the modern age of art purchasing, as there are many similarities to how we buy art today. As the stakes increased in the market, artists also felt pressure to differentiate themselves from each other. Therefore, they began to specialize in different areas. This phenomenon was quite popular in the region of the Netherlands, as artists began to find their own niche. 

This week we learned about the Studiolo Palazzo ducale from Gubbio, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This is a room I remember being in a couple times, but when we saw it in class, it did not pop into my head right away. I think this primarily because I did not know/appreciate the artistic significance the room had in relation to the Renaissance. The paneled walls were created from wood cutting technique and required intense amounts of precision. While there was no paint involved, the viewer can clearly see a typical room represented in the wood. The diversity of colors comes from a diversity in the kinds of woods used. However, the most fascinating part of this room comes from the perspective it offers the viewer. This is very calculated and in fact, was designed to look like a normal room for 5 foot 9 inches tall people. All this history in a room I have seen many times surprised me, and I think goes into showing the painstakingly small details the Renaissance focused on. 

In today’s class, we looked at a large pool of portraits. In particular, we viewed Robert Campin’s Portraits of a Man and a Woman. These two works reminded me of classic portraits one might see at a museum. Portraits for me were never a point of interest, as I would prefer looking at landscapes. However, Erwin Panofsky’s analysis of portraits that was presented in the powerpoint alongside Portraits of a Man and a Woman shifted my perception. Panofsky claimed that individuality and totality were the two essential qualities of portraiture. While these may be contradictory ideas, each adds very specific and crucial aspects to the art. Individuality is what separates the subject from other people and from other time periods. Totality relates to what the sitter has in common with the rest of humanity, things that are constant throughout time. This added humanity makes a portrait unique and not another figural representation. 

Recently in class, we have been discussing perspective. Interestingly enough, perspective was not a uniform way of drawing, but differed between northern and southern artists. Given that one of our final assignments is to compare and contrast differences in the Renaissance between the north and south, I have been paying close attention to the contentions between the styles. Firstly, southern artists seem to use a far more mathematical approach. This is evident when looking at studies like Alberti’s one point perspective. The north tended to rely on free handing perspective. Overall, there began to have more types of perspectives like aerial, and there was an added level of symbolism. This is demonstrative of how quick things can change during the Renaissance and how much art developed when compared to the present daty. 

In class today, we learned about Leon Battista Alberti’s revolutionary rules on perspective, which were published in On Painting. These guidelines give clarity on how to implement perspective into paintings. It relies on vanishing points and grid systems and to my surprise, was almost scientific. In fact, Alberti’s methodology consists mainly of drawing lines to give depth to the page or canvas. Some have equated this way of painting and drawing with looking through a window. We can see the use of this method in Masaccio’s The Holy Trinity with the Virgin, and Two Donors. There is much depth behind Christ giving the background a realistic look. As the eyes wander further into the background, details begin to get smaller, just as they wood in real life.

In today’s class, we examined the work of art Portrait of the Artist and His Wife by an unknown artist known as the Master of Frankfurt. This was a self portrait of a newly wed wife and husband, but it represents much more than what meets the eye. While the portrait appears to be a normal scene, it has minute details that relate to the humanist movement associated with the Renaissance. Artists were basically in competition with each other over how realistic they could make people and things and also, how they could play with dimension and perspective. In the Portrait of the Artist and His Wife, there is a highly realistic fly on the woman, and a piece of bread pointed in the direction of the viewer. Both these details leave the viewer wondering if they are in the painting or in real life. 

Today in class, we went over works from a plethora of artists, but the Sassetti Chapel with the Life of St. Francis most interested me. St. Francis as a character is very unique. St. Francis left his home and family to become a hermit, ultimately deciding on becoming an itinerant preacher. His focus for preaching was the value of poverty and gratitude, and throughout his career, St. Franic gained a large amount of followers. Therefore, it makes sense that he was canonized two years after his death, which is a very fast timeline. The Life of St. Franic is an altarpiece with paneled narration. My favorite panel is the miraculous resurrection of a child. Not only does this symbolize the legacy of St. Francis, but it also has an interesting representation of him from the afterlife. We have not come across a lot of dead saints in the real world, but the way in which St. Francis spirit was represented was both logical and creative.

This week, I was fascinated learning about the Limbourg Brothers’ Original Sin, as there are many unique aspects and symbolism. Firstly, the continuous narrative is different from the paneled altarpieces we have seen. Also, Eve’s physical aspects mirror the beauty standard for women at the time: pear shaped and high breasted. The archangel is red, which initially made me think it was the devil. Rather, the angel was bright red because it was burning with God’s love. However, the aspect that was most interesting for me was how the Limbourg Brothers chose to represent the divide between Eden and the real world. When Adam and Eve are forced out, they enter a seemingly empty abyss of white. The ground around Eden is littered with mountains, small in comparison to the central focus of the scene. I enjoy this juxtaposition of scenes as it highlights a clear divide between paradise and the real world.