Any egg tempera paintings?
Oh, let me look into that! Are you an artist? I have found that artists are often interested in materials.
Sort of! I just came from the library and saw some really amazing egg tempera paintings.
Many of the religious paintings in the Beaux-Arts Court, where you are, were painted with tempera. In the Renaissance-era, tempera was mixed with egg and that material practice has been used actually since ancient Egypt through the Renaissance until it was eventually replaced with oil paints.
Oh! Awesome! Why was it replaced?
Mainly because the effects that can be achieved with oil paints are much greater than with tempera. Artists could achieve more color, depth and contrasts with oil. Oil takes much longer to dry allowing the artist to continually make changes and add layers of color. The surface is often brighter.
How can we be sure that we are interpreting the meaning of the symbols correctly? Languages change and words are lost/modified - Are these meaning we derive usually best guesses or do we have concrete links?
That is, actually, quite a big issue for the Catholic Church throughout the Medieval and Renaissance period: How can we be sure the people understand what we want them to understand? Well, to achieve that, they made their stories and figures appear super simple and almost symbol-like! Blue coat, then, "equals" Mary, spotting a gold finch "equals" Jesus, and so on. You can think of these symbols almost like traffic signs - you want to make sure you keep them as simple as possible, because misunderstanding the message can lead to potential trouble.
Tell me more.
The “Madonna of Humility” type is characterized by the Virgin sitting on the ground or, as we see here, on a cushion. She is presented as quite literally down-to-earth and therefore relatable.
The artist’s name, Lorenzo Monaco, means Lorenzo the Monk and he was indeed a member of the clergy in Florence. He eventually left monastic life to establish a painting workshop, but he maintained the role of deacon.