Revisiting Traditions of Classical Art: Reflecting on a Recent Painting Commission

Connections with Classical Traditions of Beauty and Spirituality: Part II.

A recent commission involved painting two adapted replications of paintings by Italian Renaissance artists. Upon completion, these paintings were featured in the 2009, French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts’ production of Adam Guettel’s, The Light in the Piazza. I was commissioned by the director of this production, Beth Schaefer-Knauf, to study and create two paintings based on works by the Florentine painters, Cimabue (c. 1240—c. 1302), and Fra Filippi Lippi (1406-1469).

Working on the paintings for this commission provided me with the wonderful opportunity to revisit traditions of Classical beauty and aesthetic representations of spirituality in connection with human experience.

It was quite a different experience to paint from a computer generated print out of a photo, instead of from life or direct experience. There were so many degrees of separation from the original works. The challenge was to imbue my paintings with the quality of color and light and emotional depth that is inherent in the original paintings. I needed to connect to the masters’ works on a personal level. This enabled me to understand the manner that these artists tapped into the enduring qualities of beauty and spiritual tone that I feel are important to these works.

Photos by Michael Knauf

(Note: My paintings based on Cimabue’s fresco, The Madonna of St. Francis, and Fra Filippi Lippi’s oil painting, The Annunciation with Two Kneeling Donors, are in the permanent collection of the French Woods Festival Theater Department. To view additional photos of these works, in the context of the live production of The Light in the Piazza, follow this link: http://www.frenchwoods.com/2009gallery/piazzaclose1/index.html