And the winner is...

It seems most 2nd graders like "La Gioconda" 3 out of 5 students said this was their favourite work of art. Please visit wikipedia and watch the different parts of the painting photographed in the article.

Working conditions and art

This is just an introductory idea for the 3rd year students. As I said there is a Brazilian photographer who has shown the world some of the worst working conditions and yet he has made beautiful pictures.

My favourite work of art

Michelangelo. Tomb of Lorenzo de' Medici. 1526-1531. Marble. Medici Chapel, San Lorenzo, Florence, Italy.
(Here is another example for 2nd graders)
The statue of Lorenzo di Medici is my favourite work of art, when I see "Il Pensieroso" I can feel his strength, his thinking attitude is so clear I can imagine what he is thinking about. In this renaissance sculpture you see the classical influence, but you even imagine what is to come in the baroque. Geniuses are like this they get inspiration in the past and are able to be a source of newer works of arts.

Sofonisba Anguissola (c.1532-1625)Self Portrait 1554

(Here is an example of what I would like 2nd graders to do)

Sofonisba Anguissola. Self-Portrait, 1554. Kunsthistorischesmuseum, Vienna

It is very unusual to see women painters in textbooks.
Sofonisba Anguissola was an Italian painter who came to Spain and was accepted in king Philip II's court. She also taught the queen how to paint. It is not only that she was a woman, Sofonisba as her paintings show was a first class painter.

Itálica

I was fourteen when I decided to be an archaeologist. Life leads you in many different ways and now I'm teaching Geography and History.
It was a man sitting under an umbrella and arranging tesellae what I saw. The moment I saw him there concentrated on the floor of what had been a Roman house I decided I wanted to be sitting there reconstructing that mosaic.
At the beginning of that school year I had an excellent History teacher, her name was Amparo Moriés. She asked us what we wanted to be and felt really happy to hear I wanted to be an archaeologist. I'm really grateful for all her classes, her homework and her comments.