The Myth of Florentine Silk

18" x 36"

acrylic, ink and graphite on canvas

2008

Location Unknown

Exhibitions

Bering & James, Houston, Texas, Cinco, August 16 - 30, 2008

Bering Art Collective, Houston, Texas, The History of Rock & Roll, October 9 - 30, 2010

This painting was a bit of a departure for me since there isn't really a central figure or figures. The composition itself is based on a painting that resides in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence that Leonardo da Vinci was commissioned to do in the 1505. The large scale work was started, but never finished and eventually the city of Florence commissioned another artist, Vasari, to paint over it. Vasari however, was an artsit who held Leonardo in deep regard and it was rumored that he built false walls over the original and painted them during the halls reconstruction. The debate rages on today about whether or not Leonardo's original is still on the wall behind the Vasari mural. In one section of Vasari's painted battle scene there is a group of soldiers on a far hill, one bearing a bright green banner that reads "Cerce Trova" or "He who seeks, finds." It's not the kind of banner that should appear in a battle scene. Rumor is that it's his way of telling us what he has done to hide the original work beneath. The left side of this canvas is based on that banner, and the right is based on drawings done by contemporaries of what Leonardo's "Battle of Anghiari" looked like before it disappeared.