F L Y B Y E
love
dad
Sunday, January 4, 2026
Saturday, January 3, 2026
Renaissance
S A I N T J O H N T H E B A P T I S T
D O N A T E L L O 14 3 8
For hundreds of years artists were limited
to portraying their gods as divine beauty,
too perfect for this world. So with this crop
of superheroes running the universe why
bother wasting time depicting anyone else?
It was the gods that determined your fate.
John the Baptist was a gaunt ascetic.
His hand to mouth existence living
in the desert was shared by many
of his followers. They were a dogged
group of scrubs, stubbornly persisting
about the harsh, skimpy landscape.
Donatello carved his Saint from the trunk
of a poplar tree, one both simple and rough
by nature. A marble monument was never built
to describe someone's humility.
B I R T H O F V E N U S
B O T T I C E L L I 1 4 8 5
Venus, goddess of love, was born from an
ocean's froth. To see her beauty first hand
was to awaken spiritual ideals that would
otherwise remain dormant.
Sensual pleasure was given a spiritual formula.
Botticelli painted for us a full-scale nude
to make his point about anatomical beauty.
A more sensual medium than stone would be
needed. Nothing but luminous paint would do.
His Birth of Venus was an early example of
brushing oil on canvas. Until now a wood panel
was the preferred surface and tempera the paint.
Da Vinci's Mona Lisa was painted on a panel of
Poplar wood.
V I T R U V I A N M A N
D A V I N C I 1 4 9 2
We are a microcosm of the universe itself.
The Roman architect Vitruvius mathematically
proved something having to do with perfect
proportions of the human body and how this all
concerned the governing of the stars and nature.
Even scientists read their horoscope.
Da Vinci speculated in all manner of things.
He was a scientist that happened to draw pictures.
His curiosity was expressed in both mathematics
and art. He was the Renaissance man.
P I E T A
M I C H E L A N G E L O 1 4 9 9
Michelangelo was twenty-two when he began
carving a large marble block into a sculptural
centerpiece of St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City.
Mary's face is serene, not contorted with agony.
She is also far too young to be the mother
of Jesus, her thirty-three year old son.
"Virgin mother, daughter of her son."
Dante, Divine Comedy.
Here was Michelangelo giving himself artistic license
to portray the mystery of baffling contradiction.
S C H O O L O F A T H E N S
R A P H A E L 1 5 1 1
Raphael painted this monumental fresco for
the private viewing of Pope Julius II, his patron.
Julius was pleased with Raphael's painting
but not enough to distract him from overseeing
Michelangelo's ongoing work on the ceiling
of the Pope's Sistine Chapel.
Raphael painted the world's greatest minds
of antiquity gathering to share among themselves
their reasoning and philosophy.
The message to Julius was that Classical
learning, pagan though it was, often
harmonized with Christian teaching.
The time was right to read from your
books by Plato and Aristotle.
V E N U S O F U R B I N O
T I T I A N 1 5 3 8
This isn't Venus.
It began with Botticelli painting nude women
posed at Venus, Goddess of Love. Now it's
the lady next door in a pin-up poster
sending seasonal blessings.
The Duke of Urbino commissioned this painting
to celebrate his marriage, one presumably filled
with seduction.
* * * * *
OVER EASY
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