gabrielle levion
Timken Museum of Art
Create a half scale costume inspired by Madonna and Child by Niccolo di Buonaccorso 1387, Tempera and gold on wood panel. Santa Margherita a Costalpino, Siena, Italy. Looked in the Timken Museum of Art
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The Timken Museum of Art and the David C. Copley Center for the Study of Costume Design at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television,hosted the Art of Fashion 2014: A Design Competition. The winning designer was presented with a scholarship award at the Art of Fashion Award Celebration dinner. During the reception, Oscar-nominated costume designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis, founding director of the Copley Center, reviewed the judging criteria.
Inspiration:
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The Madonna in Niccolo di Buonaccorso‘s painting is a symbol of an exquisite, pure, virginal, faithful, mortal mother of the early Middle Ages. She has the power to hear a human’s prayer and relate it back to God. In studying this relationship of Madonna and God, I discovered that at the end of her earthly life, the Virgin was bodily and spiritually ascended to heaven, and from there honoured as Queen and united with Jesus Christ, her divine son. The Virgin Mary has long been called Queen of Heaven or Queen of the Earth. Its is a title given to her from the ancient Roman Catholic Church’s teaching of Mary. Mary is called Queen not only because of her Divine Motherhood of Jesus Christ, but also because God has willed her to have an exceptional role in the work of eternal salvation. In the Book of Revelation 12:1-3 she is a “A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heave: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads.”
My Timken design is a reimaging of Niccolo di Buonaccorso‘s Madonna, Queen of Heaven. It will incorporate the medieval idea of heaven as seen in the beautiful Duomo di Siena, and inspiration from the natural world. It is an interpretation of what Buonaccorso’s Virgin Mary would look like as the immortal Queen of Heaven, in the alien world of the afterlife.
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Madonna and Child by Niccolo di Buonaccorso 1387, Tempera and gold on wood panel. Santa Margherita a Costalpino, Siena, Italy. Looked in the Timken Museum of Art
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Seated on an elaborately carved Gothic throne, the Madonna inclines her head toward the Christ Child. She raises her hand to reach for a white rose, symbol of purity, that her son offers to her form the small basket on his lap. This painting was the central panel of a now dissasembled signed and dated alterpiece by Niccolò di Buonaccorso, one of the most accomplished masters active in Siena in the second half of the fourteenth century. The size and lavishness of the panel suggests that the whole altarpiece was an expensive commission of some importance and prestige, possibly for the high alter of a church or private chapel.
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Timken Museum Address
1500 El Prado, Balboa Park
San Diego, CA 92101
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Affectionately known as San Diego’s “jewel box” of fine art, the Timken Museum of Art in San Diego’s historic Balboa Park is home to the Putnam Foundation’s significant collection of European old masters, 19th century American art and Russian icons. The collection also includes the only Rembrandt painting on public display in San Diego.