Christina

I have rescued a fallen woman!

I have had this print for best part of 40 years - and somewhere along the line poor Christina ended up in the back of a storeroom hopelessly lost behind piles of rubbish.

But I found her again, and today I installed her on a wall of one of the rooms at my office.

Pietro Annigoni was a well-known portrait painter - noteably his work on Queen Elizabeth II in 1956. Although he was pursued to paint monarchs and presidents - he often just couldn't be bothered with pomp - and preferred to capture the entire width of the human condition. He was also a great fresco painter of Florentine churches. In fact, I love his work because he is essentially an Italian Renaissance artist in the line of the greats of the 14th-16th centuries. Unashamedly, he embraced that tradition and somehow made it work in the 20th century. He died in 1988 at the age of 78.

I found this quote from Annigoni - "I am convinced that the works of today's avant-garde are the poisoned fruit of a spiritual decadence, with all the consequences that arise from a tragic loss of love for life."

Strongly put - but I do think there is something there in the "loss of love for life".

I chose not to improve the lighting for this - because she is a bit dark, shadowy and mysterious anyway.