This is an image of a painting I did ofPaolo Veronese's "the annunciation".  As you can see the Mary, on the right, is being told by the angel Gabriel, hovering left, that she will conceive and give birth to the son of God.  The story of this particular painting is what has made it so intriguing to me.  In the mid sixteenth century, Paolo Veronese painted this version of the Annunciation and in it he included a glass vase on the rail near Mary.  This vase had not been made by any of the glass makers at the time or before, he sort of invented it.  Fast forward to the early twentieth centrury and a young Italian artist, designer and glass maker named Vittorio Zecchin, saw the vase in the painting which still hangs in the Museum in Venice and started making them.  The story differs depending on who you talk to about it.  Some say that Zecchin only popularized the form, others say he brought to life the design of a man who had been dead for over three hundred years.  The vase itself is a stunning blown glass form and a technically challenging exercise due mainly to its design's simplicity.  I fired this piece many many times to achieve this many different colors.  Some of the shading I am really pleased with, some of the other illusions are less convincing.  I am very much enjoying the new [to me] discipline of glass painting.

-Matthew Stewart