Ghiberti

Hello art parents! All right so here we are in April and we have Lorenzo Giberti who was a phenomenal artist and kind of one of those artists you just love to hear about like they really contributed to art and art history in that he was interested in other artists too and um you know he was kind of that beginning of the renaissance really getting things going and laying the groundwork for art to change so much. So really fun artist to talk about. He was born in Palazzo near Florence Italy in 1378 and because it was so long ago we don't have records that are detailed enough to know his birthday or month and that's kind of something to bring up to the kids I think especially or well not especially but also with the younger kids that Giberti lived so long ago I mean think about they didn't have computers they didn't even have typewriters although a lot of kids don't know what those are but there wasn't even electricity if they wanted to work at night they needed to use candles or torchlight to do it so that is kind of interesting and cool. In with our pictures we do have a self-portrait done on one of his doors so you can see that there it's kind of fun to show the kids and I mean how cool is this like the three-dimensional aspect of his work is very I mean very impressive. I thought it would be good for the kids to be able to see the baptistry of Florence so they could kind of get an idea and maybe just mention to the kids that you know cathedrals in Europe they were a really big deal back in this time people believed that part of worshipping and showing their love for God was putting you know everything they had into creating these great and beautiful cathedrals and that's why you know that's why they put in hours and hours and hours of work hand chiseling hand tooling and sculpting details like this. Here are the baptistry doors these are the second doors the gates of paradise and these are you know Gilberti's and they're kind of his masterpiece although the first set of doors he did also are amazing and beautiful and I have individual panels for you to talk to the kids about from each door so they can kind of see kind of say I mean look at this this is amazing these are like almost standing apart sculptural aspects and and then what I was talking about with the linear relief is that in the background the details are you know they're just small and they're kind of much more two-dimensional feeling and that gives you this feeling of depth in his work so you can see you know the close by arches have a lot more depth and then those far away arches are a lot more shallow and that does give you that feeling of perspective and I also I also used a photo that isn't necessarily a super awesome photo because it's behind you know it's got the plexiglass that's protecting the panels but it gives you a good kind of side view so you can see look at the little leaves hanging down from the trees and the detail of that foliage and it's just impressive the angel's wings kind of curling up over their heads which are sticking out it is beautiful work and all done by hand and now when we work with bronze or when people work in bronze what they do is they sculpt it usually in clay and then they create a mold from the sculpture and then they cast the bronze into the mold or the molten bronze into the mold and it hardens and so that's the process used for Giberti's work and this is John the Baptist here that's that statue that is larger than life and just beautifully detailed and maybe even tell the kids you know if they're fast finishers that want to come up and take a look and and see the little details because really it is the minute details that make his work just so impressive um let's see I can't remember if we did get the sacrifice of David or if I couldn't find a good one yeah or I mean the sacrifice of Isaac oh well so this is the sacrifice of Isaac the panel that Giberti did when he was in his 20s and submitted to win the contest to do the first set of baptistry doors um for the the Florence baptistry so you can kind of take a look at that this is a this is a fun motif it's done a lot in art over the years it's called a quatrefoil and and it's kind of it's kind of representative of a flower a four-petaled flower and then here's another set of doors um from from the actual doors that are done or another panel sorry from the actual doors um one of the things that the teachers mentioned in their feedback was that sometimes they felt like we're a little bit a little bit stiffer and that you feel like you have to read the biographies to the class and I definitely don't want you to feel that way um feel free to if you just read over the biography information a couple of times and then just give it in your own words it doesn't have to be super long and you want time to do the project and if you do feel more comfortable reading it of course I don't want to make you uncomfortable make you feel like you have to memorize it to get there but um just you know keep that in mind keep it keep it loose work with the kids and don't get too stressed out about the details and then also I included that simplified biography just so you could get an idea of what you tell the younger kids because they don't need to know a ton of details but of course you want to give them a little taste of what Gilberti's life was and why he was such a cool guy and he did all this amazing work and these two sets of doors took 40 years of his career and then 10 years in between he spent traveling around Europe and kind of learning and studying which I think is very cool you can never learn enough and even if you're considered a master artisan you can always learn or a master artist you can always learn more but he took the time to learn and he was really interested in other artists and and kind of took an interest in other artists his workshop was a place where people would gather and share ideas and also share like that competitive spirit which I think is great it really kind of spurred the technology of the renaissance along which is so cool I mean so many famous artists came out of that workshop you know kind of growing up and learning in that workshop and then also Gilberti wrote his commentary which is a collection of three books that he talked about art and philosophy in and then also had an autobiography and it's our first surviving autobiography of an artist which is kind of a interesting fact and so Gilberti died in 1455 he was 77 so he lived a good long life for a renaissance person age person I guess um okay so for our project the first thing you're going to have the kids do and you'll want to just tell them this is kind of a little bit tricky project but it'll be really cool when it finishes and the first thing you want to do is kind of draw out your design and I just have a ream of paper on the art cart if you want to if they're worried about um you know having it the right size you could just lay your foil sheet down on the paper or show it to them and let them kind of just lightly you can see how I just kind of traced around the edges a little bit so I so I knew how much space I had to work in and then you'll want to give everybody a cardboard a piece of cardboard that they can press on this just gives it just has a little bit more give so that they can um get a little bit better design and then we just have these little orange sticks for them to use to press their design into the foil and um the easiest way to do that is by just laying your design out on top of your foil and one thing you want to mention to them if if you're doing the older grades and you're going to flip the foil back and forth to get raised and depressed um lines then you're you know you're going to want to keep an eye on what you're doing make sure you line that foil back up and you can kind of see it underneath so it's not going to be too hard um with the younger grades it might be easiest just to have them just do their design completely on one side and and not get you know don't get too fancy um but so what I'm going to do here is just press down and you know for if I want a whole raised area I can press in that whole area and they'll kind of see you can see that it's working and they'll they'll want to check they always do and that's fine just tell them to make sure they get it um lined back up when they go back around I'll just show you here so we've got one pedal on and um you can see that it's I mean on the on so if you keep it on this side it's gonna be um indented but if you turn it over it's raised so you can see how the you know you just flip it over and have both indented and raised lines I'll finish this one up and put it on the art cart for an example you're welcome I'd love it if we just like maybe took one did a few did one to show them I'll leave this on there too so maybe you do a little part and then leave it on the cart and we can just add to it add to it and then when it gets full enough go ahead and just start a new one and just so we're not using tons and tons of foil sheets I do have extras of these we have about 50 extra but of course you know there are always kids that get stressed out and you want to let them have another try at it if you can encourage them not to you know 50 it's only 10 of the school we can't we don't have enough for everybody to do it so you know if you can just say hey you're doing great I think it looks okay we can do this to fix it or whatever and and then after they'll they're done they'll just center it where they want it on their page take your pencil oh sorry all my stuff is piled up here well we're going to pretend take your pencil and just make a little white mark you know at the four at four sides and then you can take this off and you don't want to be pressing your glue stick onto the foil because it's going to kind of change your image so then you can just take the glue stick do it on the paper set the foil on and then um carefully you know kind of carefully press the edges down um and then there you go there's your um oil relief to take home it's kind of be kind of a fun and different project for the kids if you have any questions don't hesitate to call me and I try and keep everything right there for you but I really do appreciate it when you know when you email me or call me and let me know that supplies are running low or if you have any needs or anything I'm close by I'm happy to help I hope you guys have a great month of April and a great time talking about a really impressive artist with the kids thanks so much