'Tempietto'
Reliquary - 2022Mixed media (click for details)10" x 10" x 23"
In the early 1500's Donato Bramante designed a "martyria" temple to mark the location of the death of St. Peter in Rome. The 'Tempietto di Bramante', considered by many to be the finest example of High Renaissance architecture, employs the idealized geometric shapes of Greek antiquity to symbolize the divine perfection and harmony of heaven. The same architectural elements seen in Bramante's temple (the stylobate-colonnade-drum and-dome arrangement) were adopted in miniature by reliquary artists of northern Italy and Bavaria later in the 16th and 17th centuries to enshrine sacred relics.
The reduction in annual snowpack, and increases in the severity of summer droughts being driven by climate change in the Pacific Northwest (and indeed across the world) threaten the long-term future of wetland habitats critical to the survival of a wide spectrum of amphibian species. Catastrophic collapses of amphibian populations have already been recorded across the planet in the last fifty years, with many species nearing extinction - climate change will only compound that trend.
The newt, raccoon, dragonfly and bumblebee specimens enshrined in Tempietto were found adjacent to a wetland located near my home. The cherrywood is from my family farm in Virginia.
Reliquary - 2022Mixed media (click for details)10" x 10" x 23"
In the early 1500's Donato Bramante designed a "martyria" temple to mark the location of the death of St. Peter in Rome. The 'Tempietto di Bramante', considered by many to be the finest example of High Renaissance architecture, employs the idealized geometric shapes of Greek antiquity to symbolize the divine perfection and harmony of heaven. The same architectural elements seen in Bramante's temple (the stylobate-colonnade-drum and-dome arrangement) were adopted in miniature by reliquary artists of northern Italy and Bavaria later in the 16th and 17th centuries to enshrine sacred relics.
The reduction in annual snowpack, and increases in the severity of summer droughts being driven by climate change in the Pacific Northwest (and indeed across the world) threaten the long-term future of wetland habitats critical to the survival of a wide spectrum of amphibian species. Catastrophic collapses of amphibian populations have already been recorded across the planet in the last fifty years, with many species nearing extinction - climate change will only compound that trend.
The newt, raccoon, dragonfly and bumblebee specimens enshrined in Tempietto were found adjacent to a wetland located near my home. The cherrywood is from my family farm in Virginia.
