Blog 3

A Noteworthy Medici Descendant in Today’s World

Whenever I read about the Medici’s of Florence I always think of Lorenza De’ Medici. I have her large coffee table book “Italy The Beautiful Cookbook”

She traces her ancestry to Francesca de' Medici, granddaughter of the great patron of the Renaissance, Lorenze the Magnificent. Her ancestors were from the Naples branch, not the Florentine one.

She is one of Italy's most accomplished cooks and teachers who began with a part-time job at the interior decorating magazine Novita in Milan. She is now 73 years old and could have lived a life of leisure. Instead, she has published 36 cookbooks, appeared in a 13-part series on Italian cooking for public television and still conducts a cooking school every summer at Badia a Coltibuono, an 11th century estate and winery in Chianti. The estate began as a Benedictine abbey. The massive castle has dozens of rooms, a regal garden and an ancient, vaulted wine cellar. Lorenza, along with her daughter and her son, run the winery which was one of the first to grow super Tuscan grapes. The property includes 70 acres of olive trees, the oil from which the estate bottles in designer flasks and sells as a luxury item in American gourmet shops. I have tasted her Badia a Coltibuono olive oil and it’s quite peppery.

Blog 2 - How the reading relates to the everyday world

The figure in the book of van der Weyden’s Deposition is described as resembling a tableau vivant (living picture) because the figures appear to be 3 dimensional. It was interesting to find out that there is a 2 month festival every year called Pageant of the Masters in Laguna Beach. A group of costumed artist's models are carefully posed and don’t speak or move throughout the duration of the display. It is an art form combining painting and photography. Reproductions can be as big as 35 feet wide and 14 feet high. The models are then made two-dimensional by lighting and the elimination of shadows. One famous display that they always have is Da Vinci’s Last Supper. This is the tableau vivant, not the actual painting. It looks so real.

Blog 1 - Three Pieces of Art That Reveal My Personality

I am fascinated by art found in nature. I love the strong triad color scheme of red, yellow and blue in this slab of stone. One name for this particular stone from Brazil is Van Gogh.














I also like 3D art. This is my abstraction of this stone and how the red, yellow and blue elements would be idealized if they were to take on a 3D form: a spark of red with red veins throughout, a soft flowing yellow form and a stable, solid blue background represented by the cube shape.

This glass art work is by Dale Chihuly. As I read the Basic Terms list I realized that I am drawn to intricate, delicate twisted shapes. Flamboyant certainly describes the flame shape of this work and it also describes Chihuly's personality. I had only heard the term used to describe a person and not really as an architectural style.