Special Project:

“Love That Moves the Sun”

In 2014 author Linda Cardillo attended my first solo art show, in Springfield, MA. She was in the early stages of planning her next book, which was to be about Vittoria Collonna, an Italian renaissance poetess and friend to Michelangelo. I was just about to embark on my art studies in Florence, Italy, which so happens to be the birthplace of the legendary artist. And so, the idea of a collaboration began:

Four years later, her book nearly finished, Linda approached me about creating an original piece of artwork for the cover of the book that was now titled “Love that Moves the Sun”.

Lots of research went behind the making of the book cover. It was important the the original piece of artwork feel like it could be a piece of artwork created by Michelangelo. Rather than create a full color painting, I decided to do a drawing using Conte (a red chalk,) to capturing the feeling in some of the great artist’s quicker sanguine sketches. This way, the book cover would feel like an intimate sketch created by Michelangelo.

Linda wanted the cover to be a portrait of Vittoria, but there was only one problem: besides a sketch or two, there are no portraits of the poet in her lifetime. Other painters had interpreted her over the years, but this left little to go off of. So, I had to improvise and I had a beautiful friend to pose as Vittoria. After doing several sketches, a composition was selected and the final piece could begin.

Originally, Vittoria was depicted wearing a veil, as she is in the few existing paintings of her. But this was later changed to a long renaissance hairstyle, to depict her at a younger stage in life (luckily, the model’s mother is a hairdresser!)

The final piece was a red chalk portrait of the poet, glancing over her shoulder to look at the viewer. For the book cover, a parchment-paper affect was added digitally.