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Florentine Invention |
Contributed by Judy Wenig-Horswell, Associate
Professor of Art, Goshen College..
Florentine
Invention: Baptistry III,
by Judy Wenig-Horswell, Goshen College associate
professor of art, 1978, watercolor, 10 3/4 inches
by 14 3/4 inches. From
the collection of Harriet and J. Lawrence Burkholder,
Goshen.
This
watercolor painting is from a series of paintings
inspired by a trip to Italy in 1977. I was especially
interested in the architecture of Florence, the
patterned stone work of the walls and the floors
along with the mosaics and paintings from the
Romanesque through early Renaissance periods.
All the paintings from this series are very structured
compositions with much pattern and often some
reference to specific images or structures.
The
imagery in this particular painting is based on
a mosaic image of the crucified Christ in the
Baptistry of Florence. The elongated forms of
hands and feet in Romanesque paintings and mosaics
have always fascinated me; here I combined them
with stone floor tile patterns also found in the
Baptistry. I had no intent to make this a particularly
'religious' painting although it has some obvious
Christian imagery. But I discovered, as I was
painting, that there was a strong Christian content
emerging in the way the color supported the obvious
and the more abstract imagery. Possibly because
it was not planned, it has more significance for
me than any work in which I tried to include Christian
content. It is definitely the most successful
in this respect.
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