A coloring page

I've been looking for a coloring page of Brunelleschi's Duomo in Florence, but to no avail. Here, I've made one, in case you are looking for it too.
Be sure to print it in landscape.

The Renaissance - Giotto

We're continuing on the renaissance, examining the work and artistic influence of Giotto. Famous Men of the Renaissance and Reformation has a really nice, easy biography. After reading this, we looked at some of his paintings. Then, for a real art appreciation, I gave my kids a little "window" cut into a piece of cardstock that they could put over the picture and draw what was in the window, rather than have them sketch an entire work, which can be overwhelming. Here are the results:



Can you tell the figures
that Ace copied??













Here are Deuce's



She copied one of the little angels kneeling by Mary.


Three of Hearts did two sketches from the Lamentation picture. I helped her with the face on Mary Magdalen.







The angel is a little scribble-y, but I think you can tell which one it is by the pose.










Of course I needed to set a good example, so I did one too.



















My dudes were the three amigos to the right of the Roman soldier next to Judas. I think the fellow near the top looks like the husband of a friend of mine. (hah!!)

Anyway, we had a lot of fun, and learned about how hard it is to make faces look life-like!!

The Renaissance - Days 3, 4, & 5

I suppose you want to know how the unit is going. The Book of Days project was wonderful. Check out the pictures!



We've read about Ghiberti and the Doors of Paradise in Learning Through History magazine, and are looking at bronze bas relief. Then following the instructions here, we are making our own plaster bas reliefs. First we are making the forms out of modeling clay. This week we will be making the casts out of latex, and then making the plaster casts. I'll try to keep photos to show our progression.

This week we also are going to be learning a bit more about Gutenberg and his printing press. I've got a few books on Gutenberg, and also have read some from the Famous Inventors book over at Baldwin Project.

The Renaissance - Day 2

The second day of the Renaissance. This day is pretty light, considering.

Yesterday we began the "Book of Days" project. We continued with them today. Ace is finished, Deuce and Three are still working on theirs. Jack is just coloring the outlines.

Today's subject is Dante. Van Loon's Story of Mankind has a nice introduction of who Dante was. After such introduction, we cut his portrait out and put it in our timeline notebook. Our timeline is a large sketchbook with a black line across the top of it, each page representing 100 years. We put Dante in at 1300 for writing his poem, The Inferno. We've been working on this timeline for several years now. It is something we add to whenever we feel that something "needs" to go into it.

Here are some directions to make your own timeline notebook.
From KnowlegeQuest
From Donna Young
From Sqidoo

Some links to Dante.
Here is the portrait we used.
A pretty neat explanation of the poem.
A pretty easy translation.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's adventure?

The Renaissance - Day 1

We are going to study the Renaissance for the next little bit.

Day 1 reading: Story of Mankind by van Loon, section on The Renaissance, end today at the section just before the introduction of Dante.

Label a map of the Renaissance: Italian Renaissance States, Italian Renaissance Cities
Blank Map of Italy

Art Project: Limbourg Brothers Book of Days, from Discovering Great Artists book
Some samples: http://www.gardenofpraise.com/art27.htm
http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/l/limbourg/index.html

Stay tuned for how this went, and also for Day 2's adventure!!