“Woman Holding an Egg” - Etruscan, 490-480 BCE - The Walters Art Museum
“Enjoy Etruscan Eggs” - my illustration inspired by the above ancient sculpture.
(this post was first published August 28, 2016)
After sharing my Dionysos creation, I received a challenge from a friend who works at The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. She sent me a link to an Etruscan sculpture from their collection that she felt was on-theme for use in another chicken keeping illustration.
The sculpture (top left) depicts a woman with an impish smirk gently holding out an egg as she steps forward. It's as if she's offering the egg to the viewer. I felt a connection with the image right away. My first thought was that my interpretation would be iconic—like the statue—but perhaps with a wine label treatment. The text basically wrote itself. I borrowed the date from the museum description of the original sculpture.
In consideration of the background, I turned to researching the artwork of this time period. I encountered many mosaics in a wide range of complexity featuring various natural themes from gardens to animals. I settled on a simple repeating pattern of mosaic eggs for my background—both thematically and historically appropriate to my inspirational source.
The result is a sort of synthesis between a modern screen printing style and the common traits of stylization that predominate both Mid-Century American style and that of the Ancient World. What a fun project!
If I had not received this challenge, I might have stopped with the Dionysos painting. Having completed the two, it makes me itch for a historically inspired poultry illustration series. Thank you, Thea, for helping me channel this spark of inspiration into a new creative vision to explore.
Another thing I discovered while working on these two pieces is that so many museums now have browsable digitized high resolution catalogs of their collections. Many—like The Walters Art Museum I linked to above—include several different views so that 3D objects can be more fully appreciated. If you've never done so, take one of these digitized catalogs for a spin!
If you like my illustration, you can buy it in various sizes in my Etsy shop.