Girl With Cherries

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Charles Bortelli April 20, 2012 Art History Visual Culture since 1400 Museum Paper Girl with Cherries The following research paper will study a painting by the name of Girl with Cherries(Fig 1) by Giovanni Ambrogio de Predis, an Italian Renaissance painter from Milan, Italy who lived in the 16th century around Leonardo Da-Vinci’s period. This beautiful portrait is located at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and is currently on display in the European gallery section. The medium of this particular piece is oil on wood, instead of the traditional oil on canvas with a small scale of 19-1/4” x 14-3/4”. Girl with Cherries (Fig 1) is a clear example of Leonardo’s influences that first started to take root in the development of Italian Renaissance art. Giovanni de Predis was one of the few artist who absorbed da Vinci's principles of natural shadowing of facial projection under soft direct light, and frontal position as seen in Leonardo's The Mona-Lisa (Fig 2). Such portrait raises many questions like who is this female depicted and what is she looking at? Was this female an important figure in Giovanni’s time? What does the cherries symbolizes? Why is the background black? Was Giovanni a follower of Leonardo Da Vinci? How many paintings did Giovanni create and did he collaborate with any one? Most importantly, was it Giovanni’s intention to depict Girl with Cherries to that of Leonardo’s The Mona Lisa? After doing extensive research, valuable information was found to solve this questions. Giovanni lifetime took place during the early Renaissance period of European history and rise of the Modern world. The term renaissance means rebirth and is use to mark an era of wide cultural achievement that started from the 14th through the middle of the 17th century as a result of renewed interest in the classical art and ideas of Ancient Greece
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