Drapery Study: Kneeling Woman
7:00 AM |
| Leonardo da Vinci, Drapery Study: Kneeling Woman, 1477 |
If you realized she had
no head, then you are a genius. Da Vinci appears to have forgotten to give his
kneeling lady more than an outline of a head, torso, and arms, but this plays
into our artistic viewing of the piece perfectly. Now we can make a triangle
out of the lower portion of her body. Follow the slanting line of her back up
until the point where da Vinci stopped painting. Then follow that line to where
the fabric hits the ground. A ha! Triangle! Da Vinci, you have done it again. Your
half-finished studies will never cease to amaze the easily amused public. Soon,
there will be a whole room in the Louvre dedicated to this piece. Every day people
will line up by the thousands to see it. And the scene will remind me of
something that happened to me earlier in the week.
 |
| Dark Side of the Moon, 1973, Pink Floyd |
While at a music
festival for my younger brother’s school, a group of student performers where
getting ready to perform Pink Floyd’s “Speak to Me/Breath” (for you uneducated
lot, that is off of Dark Side of the Moon.
You know, the album cover with the glass triangle revealing a beam of light’s
electromagnetic spectrum. If you still don't know, look left.) As soon as the band started playing the song, my
brother’s friend yelled, “This is one of the best songs from the greatest albums
of all time!” As the room applauded my brother’s friend, signaling their agreement,
I looked inside myself and came upon a startling realization. I suddenly
yelled, “I think it’s overrated!” The room went silent. I was lucky to escape
with my life, but that aside, da Vinci is overrated.
Even though I believe Masaccio,
Caravaggio, and Donatello are better Renaissance Era artists, I can still find
the artistic merit in da Vinci’s sketches and studies. During the Renaissance,
a desire to paint naturally people and places became very popular. This was
called Scientific Naturalism, and no one committed to Scientific Naturalism
like Leonardo da Vinci. His sketchbooks are full of notes, sketches, ideas, and
inventions. Da Vinci even went so far as to dissect human bodies to better
understand them. He believed that with a better understanding of the body one
could more accurately present and paint it. This study of a woman kneeling accurately
represents da Vinci’s method and desire to further Scientific Naturalism. A
painter cannot understand how to paint drapery without practicing and looking
at how the shadows behave within the clothing’s folds.
This being said, I
still think da Vinci and Dark Side of the
Moon are overrated. Everyone knows Pink Floyd’s best album is The Wall.
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