P1 - Caeleigh Santini

[cmsantini]

For my Florentine-inspired self portrait project, I am creating a self portrait of myself in Renaissance times, inspired by Botticelli’s painting primavera. During a field trip for my History of the Italian Renaissance course in January, we visited the Uffizi Gallery. While I think most art from the Italian Renaissance is beautiful, seeing the work of Botticelli in person was a distinguishable experience. His use of color and the content of his paintings, as well as the meanings behind the paintings that my teacher explained to us, specifically The Birth of Venus and Primavera were particularly inspiring to me. Botticelli quickly became my favorite painter during this visit and when I heard about the subject of this project and the freedom which we were allowed to create, I knew I wanted to paint myself as a Renaissance woman using Botticelli’s primavera as my inspiration. A spring baby born in May, I felt a connection between primavera and myself. The story behind primavera, how the nymph Chloris was transformed into the goddess of spring, Primavera, also added meaning to the depiction of myself as primavera as I believe studying abroad will be a very transformative experience. I first sketched the portrait of myself in pencil, attempting to recreate the flower crown and dress of primavera. Then I began to digitally paint using the sketch as my reference on the illustration software, Krita. I chose to leave the background blank for my static image as I would like to keep the foreground and background separate so that I have more freedom to continue to develop my project, perhaps into something with motion.