I have a life-long quest to see historic paintings, specifically flat wall paintings in situ like this Italian church with frescoes reaching to the ceiling; this is probably fueled by my distrust for all those art history slide shows in art school. My most recent quest for historic examples was my grant time spent in France looking at 12th century church frescos.
This love affair with French Romanesque paintings began when I was a teenager and bought a used book French Romanese Paintings with colored illustrations. Thanks to the grant, at age 70 I got to see them first hand. They were thrilling.
Chapel walls were completely covered with long registers broken up into story units and these were stacked up to the ceiling in two or three registers. Each church had a distinctive style, but all were 12-century works and executed in very limited palettes .
I did two series of paintings specifically about the frescoes, one about the abduction of Saint Foy and the other on the damaged angels in the ancient baptistery in Poitiers.
mosaic floor at Ganagobie
Click on painting to see a slide show of some paintings I did while investigating French church frescoes.