Every Inchie Monday: Renaissance

This week's word at Every Inchie Monday is

Long post!

Ah, the Renaissance.  My favourite period of art.  Prepare yourself for a brief presumptuous blurb on my favourite art of various forms.  (It's the art and English teacher in me; I can't help it.)  I'm sure a lot of you know these things.

 

I wanted to show you my favourite Renaissance painting, which is Titian's "Bacchus and Ariadne", but it is a complicated canvas full of numerous iconographic figures in various positions and wasn't really sensical in one inch format. 

So instead, my first offering is a photograph of one of the foremost achievements of the early Italian Renaissance -- the dome of the Florence cathedral.  It was a wonder at the time, and still is, I think.  The cathedral itself was built from 1296 to 1436.  The dome was engineered by Filippo Brunelleschi and was "the first 'octagonal' dome in history to be built without a temporary wooden supporting frame"  (Wikipedia) -  a stupendous achievement.

 

 

 

 

But going with my policy to do something more than submit a photograph, I did another one. 

 

This one is supposed to represent the English Renaissance, a hundred years later and more focussed on literature than the Italian, which is known more for its visual art (although there is great literature too).  

 

English Renaissance is Shakespeare.  I love Shakespeare, but when it came to writing my Master's thesis on Renaissance literature, I chose to do it on Edmund Spensers' allegorical masterpiece, "The Faerie Queene".  Published in 1590 - 1596, it is the longest poem in the English language. (at least it was at the time and for many centuries - who knows what has been written in the recent past).  It is a remarkable achievement - six books, containing approximately 50-60 cantos (it varied), each canto consisting a different number of stanzas (30 - 50), each stanza containing exactly 9 lines using the same consistent rhyme scheme - over 1000 stanzas.  Wow.

 

So here is my Fairie Queene (often called Gloriana and who was allegorically meant to represent Queen Elizabeth I).  It's kind of sad representation of such a glorious poem but I'm not good at drawing people. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here endeth the lesson.  Have a glorious week.