Friday Museum Sketches

Okay this ones an old one. From Seattle Art Museum's permanent collection; A wooden statue of a seated Guan Yin from the Song Dynasty (12th-13th Century) You can see the original here.

Friday Museum Sketches

Alright for this week's sketch we have a statue of Saint Luke the Evangelist at the Seattle Art Museum done in fifteenth century Brussels. This one of my favorite pieces at the museum. It has a forced perspective that makes it very difficult to get right despite several attempts at sketching it. This one is probably as close as I've gotten to a decent representation.

Friday Museum Sketches

Okay, today we're back to the roman with two details from a first century frieze, "Relief Showing the Reading of Auguries and Declaration of Sacred Vows" from the Louvre. You can see a photograph of the original here.

Friday Museum Sketches

Okay, for todays sketch we have a detail from Ghiberti's Adam and Eve Panel from his Gates of Paradise in the Florence Baptistry. As a cartoonist, I'm very fond of this piece. By the positioning of figures and angels, the sculptor does a masterful job steering our eyes accross four scenes from the story of Eden; the creation of Adam, Eve, the temptation and finally the expulsion from Eden. One could almost consider the Gates of Paradise as a renaissance comic books

Friday Museum Sketches

Okay everybody. Todays sketch is from Ghiberti's Gate's of Paradise from the Florence Baptistery. Specifically it is a detail from the David and Goliath panel (bottom left corner) Which was one of the three panels on tour at the Seattle Art Museum. I had seen them once before in Florence but back then I was still in my "Michelangelo is God" "and all other Florentine Sculptors were just progressional steps towards the master's art. Now some time later I am happy to say I am fully able to appreciate these pieces on their own merits and appreciate Ghiberti's genius.

Friday Museum Sketches

Okay today it's back to the Louvre's Roman Collection, or at least the part of it that was visiting the Seattle Art Museum. This was one of my favorites. I really wanted to take another crack at it because I don't think this sketch really does it justice. Any way what we have here is a fragment of a third century roman sarcophagus featuring a Poet surrounded by three muses (Couldn't find a photo for comparison, sorry) I like it because how abstract quality (all the standing figures seem to be about five heads high. This is probably due to, one, Fitting the figures into the limited format the sarcophagus allowed and, two, as we got to the third century roman sculptors began to drift away from the near photorealism of the republican and Julio-Claudian period.

Friday Museum Sketches

All right. Today's entry is from the Seattle Asian Art Museum's collection of Indian Sculpture. This piece is a Jain dancing girl from 11th century Rajasthan.

Friday Museum Sketches

Okay, today two different angles from the same piece, a fragment of a roman archetectual relief from the first quarter of the second century CE, from the Louvre's Roman collection (it was on tour at the Seattle Art museum the one time I was at the Louvre I only focussed on the paintings) The scene shows the preparation of a sacrifice. The you can see the real version here