SARUM U3A

Sarum U3A Coffee Mornings are held at 10 a.m. on the third Wednesday of each month in St Francis Church Hall. At the February gathering, Phyl Mullins welcomed 21 new members and Jean Lunnon announced that Sheila Wills would be leading a Movement to Music session after the morning’s proceedings.
Making a welcome return, our speaker was Art Historian Robert Baggs. His topic, “The Painter Practice – how they made the masterpieces of Western Art”, was an illustrated talk on the way Florentine Renaissance painters carried out their trade and gave a fascinating insight into the way they were trained, the materials they used, how they worked and what they created.

We learnt that artists painted to order; the Pope was the most important patron. Boys would be put to a master painter to be trained from the ages of 12 to 18. The materials were mainly tempera on wood where egg yolk is the binding medium (with 2000 painters working full time they needed a lot of eggs!). Artists could earn huge sums of money - the equivalent of £500,000 per year at today’s rates. Recommended for further reading is the 15th century Craftsman’s Handbook (Il Libro dell’Arte) by Cennino Cennini.

Links 1). Mumbles 2). Bitter Rivals

Mr Baggs also spoke about the Victoria Climbié Charitable Trust which he helped to establish in the Ivory Coast.  www.irr.org.uk/climbie 

Phyll Babb led the vote of thanks for “our morning’s very rich experience”.

The 18th March Coffee Morning is also the AGM and, for light relief, Nick Thomas will be speaking on “The Power of Humour in Everyday Life”.