Here is your five minutes of distraction from the current awfulness that is going on in the world, with Uccello’s Battle of San Romano, 1438-40 in the National Gallery.
So, your questions:
1. What is this a picture of and which side is winning?
2. How many people are dead?
2. The helmets are pretty fancy - which is your favourite?
1. Find out more about Uccello – you can read an entry for him by Vasari at Project Gutenberg: https://bit.ly/2RfbTUo and wikipedia: https://bit.ly/34ihpuC
2. If you haven’t done it already, practice your perspective and draw your own perspectival throne/cube/anything. Have a look online or check this out to copy: https://bit.ly/3bPX5Dk or https://bit.ly/2JKqIKw
3. Do some research on hats at the Victoria & Albert website: https://bit.ly/2RiGeRJ and then design your own fantastic hat. Can you then make it? Photos please!
4. What about armour? This is quite a fun site to build your own suit of armour: https://bit.ly/3aQp31M, and https://bit.ly/2URHQnX for a brief overview.
5. Why not make a suit of armour – a helmet out of a box, and you can make your own sword here (I’ve tried it and it’s very straightforward!): https://bit.ly/3dVp3j3 and there is some other fun stuff there as well (including a shield – thanks English Heritage!)
So, our next painting will be the classical Triumph’s of Caesar by Mantegna, painted in the late 1400s and in Hampton Court Palace, and I have three questions for you for this image: https://bit.ly/2XhUSg5 :
1. How many people can you see, more or less?
2. How many classical statues can you find?
3. What are the brightest colours in the painting?