Meet the Homunculus

 

Friday, February 8, 2013 – Meet the Homunculus  

  

Yesterday’s art history lecture left me on the verge of tears.  Not because I hate the class – on the contrary, I adore the class, and yesterday’s lecture was no exception.  My amazing professor has already given me an array of tools for appreciating art, regardless of its time, place, or medium.  And I was really excited when we started to address the actual content of western art.  In less than seventy-five minutes, we did a whirlwind tour of the antecedents of the Renaissance.  In other words, we got an information-packed overview of ancient Greek architecture and sculpture, ancient Roman architecture, sculpture and painting, Medieval art (early, Romanesque, and Gothic) and the Italo-Byzantine tradition of the Mediterranean world, all of which laid the foundation for the Renaissance.  Towards the end of the lecture, Dr. De Armendi introduced us to Cimabue, an important transitional figure, and his monumental 13^th century altarpiece.  Now I’ve got a brain brimming with new understanding of the history and the art of several centuries.  My vocabulary includes a long list of new words, my favorite of which is “homunculus,” which is defined as a little man.  This is often seen in Byzantine paintings of the Virgin holding the baby Jesus, who is portrayed as a child-sized man. 

 

 

I can hardly wait to learn about Giotto and the early Renaissance next week.  Well, then, why did I feel like crying when I walked out of class?  Simply because I realized how much I’d missed over the years on trips to Athens, Florence, Rome, Siena, Paris, London, Brussels, Antwerp, Amsterdam, and so many more places.  It’s as if I had walked through several living art history courses with my eyes closed.  Such a waste!  But there’s no point in crying now.  It’s time to start planning how to remedy the situation.  The solution will undoubtedly include several field trips. 

In conclusion, I hope my much younger friends will learn from my experience.  If I were still teaching in high school, I’d urge my college-bound students to make a survey of Western art a part of their undergraduate experience.