Publication Date: Friday Nov 10, 2000

Kid-tested, mother-approved

Michelangelo is famous for painting the Sistine Chapel. But most people probably don't know that he greatly preferred carving sculptures, and once commented that painting was "women's work."

This little-known fact is revealed in the Renaissance Art Game, a new card game developed by Palo Altan Wenda O'Reilly, with the assistance of her three adolescent daughters--Ahna, Noelle and Mariele--and their friend, Erin Kravitz.

The game includes a deck of 30 playing cards and a full-color 80-page art book, packaged in a beautiful Renaissance treasure box. Children play "Go Fish" and "Concentration"-style card games with the art cards, which feature the works of six Renaissance artists: Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Botticelli and Fra Angelico. Each artist's group of cards is color-coded, and each card in the deck has a two-page spread in the companion book (the book is not needed, however, to play the game).

Released in October, the game sold 4,000 copies in the first two weeks. O'Reilly credits the success to the fact it is essentially a game kids already know--"Go Fish"--which doesn't have complicated directions.

O'Reilly, who holds a Ph.D. in education, objects to how a lot of modern children's games are played.

"Most educational games are disguised tests. You win if you know the most. But kids don't like that. They want to play and have a good time," O'Reilly said.

O'Reilly first developed the idea for the game eight years ago, while traveling with her family in France. She would drag the girls to museums, but they would last only 20 minutes inside. Then, while living in a chalet in Argentiere, a tiny mountain town in the French Alps, O'Reilly bought the girls "Sept Familles," a French card game that profiles Impressionist painters. The girls loved the "Go Fish"-style game and played it over and over again.

"They started out not knowing any of the painters or the works of art," O'Reilly recalled. "But just in the course of playing the game, they learned to recognize not only the artists and their works of art, but they began to understand what makes a Van Gogh a Van Gogh, what makes a Monet a Monet."

"When we went back to the Orsay Museum (Musee d'Orsay) in Paris (which specializes in Impressionist painters), instead of dragging them around, they ran from room to room!," O'Reilly said.

The family then decided to develop their own card game, which would feature artists from the Renaissance era, which began in the 1400s and lasted until the late 1500s. They were intrigued by the time period, since all the Florentine artists knew each other. The girls also had their own preferences: Erin liked Raphael because of his use of bright, clear colors, while Noelle's interest in Greek mythology attracted her to Botticelli.

The group decided to include a companion book, but wanted it to be better than the one included with "Sept Familles". That didn't interest kids, they said, as it had small print, one long text and lacked photographs. The O'Reillys and Kravitz wanted their book to interest children, and consequently decided to include interesting stories and photographs.

O'Reilly went to the Palo Alto Main Library and poured over thousand of art books in her search to find interesting anecdotes about the artists and their works. She then wrote small segments on pieces of paper and taped them all over the house. The girls graded them and told her which ones they thought were the most interesting and the most boring.

"I tried to put it together in such a way that the kids got a combination of art technique and stories about the artists that would bring them alive for kids," said O'Reilly, who wrote and edited the book.

Originally conceived as a home project, O'Reilly ultimately decided to publish it and make it museum-quality work. Birdcage Books, the O'Reillys' Palo-Alto based publishing company (run with husband James, publisher of the award-winning Travelers' Tales series), financed the $50,000 project, which took five years to come to fruition.

Each of the girls acquired their own favorite artist stories over the course of the project. Kravitz recounted how Michelangelo, who often criticized other artists, was punched in the nose by one of his peers. His nose was badly broken and his face never looked the same again. The artist who punched him was subsequently known as "Torrigiano, the Nose-Breaker," and was hated long after his death because of what he had done to "the divine Michelangelo."

"He probably deserved it--Michelangelo had a sharp tongue," O'Reilly said. "But his bark was meaner than his bite."

Noelle learned that Leonardo da Vinci was a perfectionist about the human body, and would go to a hospital for the poor and dissect corpses. He once stayed with a dying old man and then ran off to dissect him, because he wanted to determine the cause of "so sweet a death."

Mary's favorite story concerned "The Last Judgment," a painting Michelangelo did on the wall of the Sistine Chapel. One of the Pope's high officials objected to his use of nudity, saying it didn't belong there. Offended by his criticism, Michelangelo decided to depict the official in the painting as a devil with donkey ears and a snake wrapped around his body.

O'Reilly was taken by the "Pieta," which shows Christ in the arms of his mother after being taken down from the cross. When it was first exhibited, people asked how the mother of a grown man, in the depths of her grief, could appear so young and beautiful. Michelangelo replied that physical perfection was a symbol of a pure and noble spirit.

Kravitz was also intrigued by the fact that the "Pieta" was the only work on which Michelangelo signed his name. Mary's sash bears his signature on the 1499 marble statue.

In addition to book stores, the game is currently available at the Louvre, New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, Washington's National Gallery, the Smithsonian and the Getty museums. It can also be purchased locally at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Cantor Arts Center and the Pacific Art League in Palo Alto, where proceeds from each sale go toward the league's Building fund.

"It's satisfying for us to give back to such a wonderful organization, as the girls began their art career at the Pacific Art League," O'Reilly said.

The O'Reillys are currently working on French and Japanese versions of the game. Their next project is the Impressionist Art Game, which is scheduled for release in Christmas 2001.

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