Rhapsodies

Today’s Sketch is of St. Luke the Evangelist by Giovnni Di Paolo (c 1470-75)  from the Seattle Art Museum.

This piece is another reason I’ve slowly begun to love medieval art. In most of the art history courses I took in college would have been using a work like this as the final step to the Reneisance pointing out the lack of perspective and anatomical accuracy and for the longest time I would agree with them looking down my nose at works like this.

But when you really look at these works and see the intricate brushwork you see the artists of this periods new exactly what they were doing and were very good at it.

Another thing I like about this painting is the bull. Now the winged bull is the symbol of St. Luke and you will see it in nearly every image to help identify the saint. But in this picture it looks like a strange but very cute pet.