Sunday, November 27, 2016

Cats in Art: Church Fresco of Seeing Eye Dog

From my continuing weekly Sunday series of cats in art.  Having moved on from Stefano Zuffi's marvelous work, The Cat in ArtI am now using some ideas from Caroline Bugler's equally impressive book, The Cat/3500 Years of the Cat in Art.   

After several posts on the art of Chardin, I am diverting into some art that the bride and I just saw in Italy on a wonderful visit in October to the Amalfi Coast.


Here we have a series of three shots of the same painting, each one taken successively closer.  These are from the Duomo di Salerno (Salerno Cathedral) and date from the 1600s.


That's a dog, you say?  You'd be right.  For the first time ever here at my regular Sunday Cats in Art post, I will feature a dog.  Why?  Because it was beautiful art.


We visited a church in the lovely town of Salerno that supposedly contains some bones of St. Matthew, one of Jesus' twelve disciples.  You head down under the sanctuary to a crypt...but what a crypt it is!  Rather than being small and dank, this is a huge open room  with arches in the low ceiling, each of which has been painted with a Biblical scene involving St. Matthew.

Which Christmas approaching I figured it might be appropriate to use an image of Jesus healing a blind man:




And finally, the puppy close up:



What makes these frescoes great is that they are only some 20' above you, thus rendering them--to me and the bride--much more impactful than the famous paintings waaaaay up on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican in Rome.  Each circular painting here in Salerno is perhaps 8-10" across.   I didn't count but there are a couple of dozen at least.

Tucked away here.  Utterly stunning.

[Gary note: With my Cats in Arts posts, I encourage you to scope out the art appreciation site Artsy (I have no financial interest in the site, I just like it), where you can explore many aspects of the world of art.  You'll certainly be entertained and enlightened!] 




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