Christmas
Blessings
Images Modified For Christmas
E-cards
Created & Edited by K. R. Overholt Critchfield ©
2004, 2009-2022
~~ Updated & Published © January 30, 2023 ~~
|
Welcome
to a webpage devoted to Christmas Blessings!
For many years, I created birthday e-cards to
send to members of my family and friends. Then
one winter, I began to search for a picture for
an e-card that could express the Christmas story,
yet remember those who celebrate other holy days.
Back then, I barely knew how to manipulate jpgs,
but I got better over time, first using a modest
computer program called PhotoStudio, and
then using an Adobe Photoshop program,
and currently using Adobe Photoshop Elements
2019. After a tentative start, my e-cards
began to rely on artwork that appeared to have no
copyright problems, often works from centuries
past. For Christmas, the pictures needed to
feature The Nativity or the Madonna
and Child, and the Internet provided many
different expressions of both. It is good to keep
Christmas in our hearts all year long, so I hope
this webpage will be enjoyed throughout the year,
beginning with my most recent e-card, then
working back to the first one attempted.
|
|

The Nativity, by
Federico Barocci (circa 1526-1612)
Christmas Blessings 2022; E-card Created
& Edited by K. R. Overholt Critchfield ©
2022
|
|
Karen's Note
Christmas
Blessings 2022 is represented by this 1597
expression of The Nativity that sets the
manger inside a barn-like structure with a door.
Mary's clothing -- the style and colors depicted
-- look more contemporary to that era than
Biblical, but still there is a manger, "an
ox and ass" nearby, and "swaddling
clothes" on the baby. Also, a black,
wide-brimmed hat is seen leaning up against a
straw basket, both looking out of place, but I
kept them in the picture. The e-card shows a
large portion of the original painting, but since
the original is taller than it is wide, the scene
needed to be slightly rearranged as to the
positioning of Mary, the baby Jesus, and the
animals. The adjustments worked really well,
without diminishing the artist's original intent.
This
scene was created by an Italian Renaissance
painter with several names. His original name was
Federico Fiori, but he was nicknamed Il
Baroccio, then became known as Federico
Barocci, or Barozzi. He was born in Urbino, Duchy
of Urbino, a son of Ambrogio Barocci, a sculptor
of some local eminence. By 1548, he was in Rome,
where he worked in the pre-eminent studio of the
day. Barocci twice lived and worked in Rome, but
returned to his native city for health reasons.
After four years to regain his health, he
remained productive for nearly forty years,
working on major altarpiece commissions
"from afar." His paintings were
considered lively and brilliant, and he continued
to innovate. His pastel studies are the earliest
examples of that technique to survive. He
pioneered oil sketches, and developed a complex
process to complete altarpieces that led to them
being finished with speed and success in
execution. Barocci's compositions developed an
emotional, spiritual style, and along with bold
brushwork, his work influenced Peter Paul Rubens
and a host of other artists.
|
|

Birth of Christ, by
Ernst Deger (1809-1885)
Christmas Blessings 2021; E-card Created
& Edited by K. R. Overholt Critchfield ©
2021
|
|
Karen's Note
This Christmas Blessings e-card was a
real challenge, in that I was working with a
photograph of a fresco, specifically, a fresco in
the Church of St. Apollinaris, called Birth
of Christ. My e-card kept the manger scene,
but left out the band of angels perched on the
roof. The challenge came from a need to recreate
faces and clothing and the rooftop -- nearly
every detail in the whole tableau. I kept working
until all the faces and their ethnicities were
clarified, because the artist seemed to have
intended this. A lot of time was spent on Mary
and the Baby, on Joseph and the golden
background. Once again, I used a photo of linen
to create the border, changing the color until it
looked right.
Ernst Deger was a 19th century German
religious artist. He was born in Bockenem,
Hanover (4-15-1809), and died in Düsseldorf
(1-27-1885). In 1828, he went to the Berlin
Academy of Fine Arts, and later went to Italy
(1837) to study the frescoes by the old masters
in Florence and Rome. After four years of study,
Deger was entrusted with the most important
frescoes in the Church of St. Apollinaris,
Remagen. After eight years of work, he finished a
series of paintings that represented the events
in the life of Christ, afterwards called the
zenith of the German school of religious
painting. His style was vigorous, direct and
simple, careful and precise. His drawings and
characterizations were considered masterful, and
his colors were rich and harmonious.
|
|

Nativity, by Carlo
Maratta (1625-1713)
Christmas Blessings 2020; E-card Created
& Edited by K. R. Overholt Critchfield ©
2020
|
|
Karen's Note
This is my all-time favorite personal
expression of The Nativity, showing the
two most important details -- Mary and the
newborn baby Jesus -- with an added night sky
full of stars behind them. The original painting
depicts them bathed in light, but surrounded by
cherubic angels. My work relied on the light, but
replaced the cherubs with stars. If I could have
made the stars twinkle and slowly move closer to
frame the Mother and Child, it would
have shown what was in my imagination at that
time. The resulting composition sort of suggests
that the starry frame is happening. For this
e-card, simplicity counted, so my work
concentrated on the details and the color of a
rectangle of linen. The font color came from the
baby's skintone.
Carlo Maratta or Maratti (1625-1713) was a
highly successful Italian painter, who was born
in one of the Papal States, and was
professionally active mostly in Rome. His
paintings were "classicizing," in a
Late Baroque Classical manner. From 1660 onward,
he developed a private client base of wealthy
patrons of Europe, then established the most
prominent art studio of his time in Rome, and
eventually was considered Rome's leading artist.
In his prime, he was commissioned to do paintings
for many churches throughout Italy, and for
Vatican leaders, like Pope Alexander VII and Pope
Clement X. A well-known portrait painter, he
painted a portrait of Pope Clement IX, and
produced numerous portraits of English visitors
to Rome, during their Grand Tours. In 1704,
Maratta was knighted by Pope Clement XI. In his
later years, when he could no longer paint, he
continued to run his studio in Rome, until his
death in 1713.
|
|

Madonna in the Clouds,
by Bartolome Esteban Murillo (1617-1682)
Christmas Blessings 2019; E-card Created
& Edited by K. R. Overholt Critchfield ©
2019
|
|
Karen's Note
This expression of the Madonna and Child
is probably my most extravagant e-card, but the
painting, itself, demanded it. The painter
depicted Mary seated on a billowing cloud against
a golden sky, balancing Jesus on her lap, calmly
showing her pride and reverence at the same time.
I left out the cloud in order to focus on the
mother and child. This painting is a kind of
icon, a Spanish representation of humility and
heavenly glory, both. It needed to be surrounded
by a gold frame embellished with flowers, the
kind of flowers that could be readily found
anywhere in the countryside -- another
juxtaposition of opposites -- with common
wildflowers pressed into the gold. It looked
right to me. I spent a lot of time creating the
oval presentation, burnishing the golden sky
background, and creating the flowered frame.
There was some slight editing of the child and
the drapery.
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617-1682) was a
Spanish Baroque painter, best known for his
religious works, but also for his lively,
realistic portraits of the everyday lives of
women and children, even beggars. He had many
students and followers who studied and imitated
his paintings throughout Spain and its empire,
and was the first Spanish painter to achieve
widespread fame in Europe.
|
|

Adoration of the Shepherds,
by Gerard van Honthorst (1592-1656)
Christmas Blessings 2018; E-card Created
& Edited by K. R. Overholt Critchfield ©
2018
|
|
Karen's Note
When I found this painting, it seemed to be
full of happiness, and that won me over. There is
another version of this work by the same artist
that bears the same title and the same date,
minus the added word circa, but this one
pleased me more. The colors are more striking,
and the expression of Mary is sweet and proud and
lovely. She is a good likeness of the young girl
described to us in the story of The Nativity.
The light that emanates from the infant could be
a holy light from the child, himself, or perhaps
it comes from the Christmas Star shining
down from the night sky. Either way, it is a
scene to remember.
My editing work was mostly used for bringing
figures out of the dark a little more, and
rearranging a few things about the infant. Often
artists in the past did not seem to understand
how to paint babies at any age -- newborn or
older. This painting had truly wonderful
depictions of everyone and everything, except the
baby. I tried to solve that problem a little. The
framing came from a photo of a carpet found
online. In retrospect, perhaps the border should
have been the same wider width all around.
Gerard van Honthorst (or Gerrit van
Honthorst) (1592-1656) was a Dutch Golden
Age painter, known for his skill at chiaroscuro
and the artificial illumination of scenes,
sometimes lit by a single candle. He was born a
son of a decorative painter in Utrecht, Dutch
Republic (11-4-1592) and died there (4-27-1656),
but by 1616, he was in Italy, among a group of
young artists from Utrecht, who came to study
art. In Rome, he secured important commissions,
and then returned to Utrecht in 1620, and built a
considerable reputation there and abroad.
|
|

The Sacred Family, by
Pompeo Batoni (1708-1787)
Christmas Blessings 2017; E-card Created
& Edited by K. R. Overholt Critchfield ©
2017
|
|
Karen's Note
The picture above is a portion of
16th century Italian painter Pompeo Batoni's The
Sacred Family, dated as circa 1763. The
original includes Joseph in the upper left
corner, looking on as Mary cuddles a fully
rendered older-looking baby Jesus. When you see a
full length version of this painting, it is very
nice, but somebody clipped a tight shot of Mary
and Baby Jesus, and that is the picture I saw
first. After finding a picture of the full length
painting, it seemed to me that the tight shot
told the whole story of the love, trust and
interdependency of a mother and child. That is
where my heart was, so it became my Christmas
story for 2017.
My work with the photograph was
in modifying colors and textures. Special
attention was given to the skin tone of the
mother and child, adding a healthy glow. Once the
picture looked right, I tried several different
kinds of backgrounds and frames, but they usually
diminished the beautiful picture. In the end, I
created a frame from the border of a carpet, from
a picture found online, and it worked just fine.
Then I took the red color from the upper lip of
the child to finish the full effect.
Pompeo Girolamo Batoni
(1708-1787) was a celebrated Italian painter,
producing many portraits, along with numerous
allegorical and mythological pictures. His style
was inspired by elements of classical antiquity,
and is considered a precursor of Neoclassicism.
Known as the best Italian painter of his time, he
worked with paint and transparent watercolors,
also working as a draughtsman. Because of the
high demand of foreign visitors seeking
portraits, he won fame via the art-loving British
nobility, often featuring them with famous
Italian landscapes in the backgrounds. His
portraiture also extended to the kings and queens
of Poland, Portugal and Prussia, the Holy Roman
Emperors, and three Popes, among others. He also
was approached by many churches in Italy for
altarpieces.
|
|

The Light of the World,
by François Boucher (1703-1770)
Christmas Blessings 2016; E-card Created
& Edited by K. R. Overholt Critchfield ©
2016
|
|
Karen's Note
Above is my version of The
Light of the World (1749 or 1750), by French
painter François Boucher (1703-1770). In French,
it is called La lumière du Monde. As
shown, I found two different dates for Boucher's
original creation. It is a lovely expression of
the First Noel. The modifications were
in accenting the colors, lighting and the
background. Also, I brought the circle of people
out of the shadows and brightened up the cow. The
frame was inspired by the border of a carpet,
taken from a photograph found on the Internet. I
managed to match the colors and make the frame
look like a wood carving. It seemed to fit.
This picture was chosen for my
2016 e-card precisely because of the familial
gathering, which reminded me of several members
of my immediate family who recently passed away,
two of them died in 2016. For me, the figures in
the background represented my mother Rose, who
died in April 2010, my adoptive father Lee, who
died in February 2016, and my brother Duane, who
died in October 2016. Working on this photograph
was a blessing to me.
|
|

Innocence, by
William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905)
Christmas Blessings 2015; E-card Created
& Edited by K. R. Overholt Critchfield ©
2015
|
|
Karen's Note
In 2015, my inspiration came from
Innocence (1892), a painting by a
prolific French painter from La Rochelle, France,
William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905). This was
the second picture of a Bouguereau painting that
I used from his vast collection (see Christmas
Blessings 2013 below). In his lifetime, he
produced 822 known finished paintings, and many
of them can be found on the Internet. The photo
above is the top portion of a soft iconic
painting that features a Madonna and Child,
plus a baby lamb. Both the baby and the lamb are
beautiful. Depicting babies in paintings appears
to be a difficult task for most artists, but
here, Bouguereau has created something quite
lovely.
As an icon, this picture is
wholly an expression of the love and protection
of a mother for her precious child, but it also
includes a melancholy foreshadowing of the future
appellation for Jesus, The Lamb of God.
It seemed to me that the figures should look more
human, so my goal was to reduce some of the
otherworldliness of the original, and increase
the perception of reality. My work shows up in
the skin tones, the colors of the clothing and
the background, along with a few extra details to
the left and right. It took a long time to decide
on a surrounding frame, but a photo of a linen
panel with pastel stripes gave the best look.
|
|

The Madonna of the Rose,
by Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio (1467-1516)
Christmas Blessings 2014; E-card Created
& Edited by K. R. Overholt Critchfield ©
2014
|
|
Karen's Note
For this e-card, the center of
attention is The Madonna of the Rose, by
the Italian painter, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio
(1467-1516). Another source gives a different
title, Virgin And Child With A Flower Vase,
but no date was given. Also, his surname has
another spelling -- Beltraffio. When I decided to
work on this picture, I did not know that
Boltraffio was one of the "strongest
artistic personalities" to emerge from the
studio of Leonardo da Vinci, who happens to be
one of my all-time favorite artistic geniuses.
Recent research gave me that bit of news.
For me, this picture came alive
while manipulating the lights and darks, the skin
tones, and the flowers. Then a whole lot of time
was spent creating the frame from scratch, using
a photo of a green patterned fabric. Not yet
mentioned is the additional task of finding the
proper font for an e-card. Every picture needs a
font that fits the visual story, so I try all
kinds of fonts, with and without shadows, before
picking the one that looks the best. Because of
the pattern in the green frame, it was hard to
find a font that both suited the overall
experience and stood out as a message.
Back in 2014, when my sister saw
my finished product, she commented, "Of
course you would choose a picture that looks like
you and Matthew," which surprised me, but a
second glance proved she was right. The faces on
this High Renaissance painting looked a bit like
me and my son, Matthew, when I was younger and he
was a baby. That is, except for the red hair.
Certainly, the artist's depiction of the mother
holding onto her busy child reminded me how I had
to keep an eye on my own son, who was always on
the move, especially when he learned to walk.
|
|

Song of the Angels or The
Virgin of the Angels, by William-Adolphe
Bouguereau (1825-1905)
Christmas Blessings 2013; E-card Created
& Edited by K. R. Overholt Critchfield ©
2013
|
|
Karen's Note
Regretably, this e-card was sent
out without identifiying the original painting or
the painter, and that was probably because I
could not locate any data back then. If my memory
serves, I found the full-length picture online
somewhere, and it did not include any details.
Maybe a year later, while looking for another
Christmas subject, I discovered the name of the
artist, along with pictures of a whole lot of his
other works. The 19th century French painter,
William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905), was the
creator of the original work, Song of the
Angels (1881), or The Virgin of the
Angels (1881).
In the original, Bouguereau
presented the angels as very real
three-dimensional figures, which must have been
astonishing to those who saw it for the first
time. Basically, I believe he was saying,
"Angels are real," and I appreciate
that viewpoint. My modification of the photograph
made the angels look ephemeral, because that is
my own philosophical point of view. I believe in
angels, but believe they are . . . well, other.
In my imagination, angels exist both inside and
outside our world of three dimensions,
simultaneously. This was my first time using the
special effects that are offered in the Adobe
Photoshop program. It took quite a lot of
experimentation to produce the effect that
appealed to me. I also worked on the colors, the
highlights and the shadows of the dozing mother
and sleeping child, and brought out the colors in
the background.
|
|

Madonna and Child, by
Marianne Preindlsberger Stokes (18551927)
Christmas Blessings 2012; E-card Created
& Edited by K. R. Overholt Critchfield ©
2012
|
|
Karen's Note
At the time I was working on this
appropriately named Christmas Blessings
e-card, using a small photograph clipped from the
Internet, the name of the artist escaped me. All
I knew was that this was a lovely modern iconic
picture. Especially lovely was the depiction of
the baby, and I appreciated the subtle,
foreshadowing arcs of thorns. In religious terms,
the Madonna's red clothing and golden breastplate
remind us she is a highborn woman. Essentially,
she is a queen without a crown, and her baby is a
future king. To me, this was a political
statement, softly but truthfully spoken.
Because the picture was small, I
needed to search the Internet for a background
that would echo the designs used by the original
artist, and found something with a sky of stars
and hearts that seemed to fit. I spent a lot of
time melding the picture with the sparkling
background, especially at the top of Madonna's
halo, because the halo on the picture I was using
had been cut off. Three years later, I discovered
a web page that featured an even better
photograph than the one I had worked to modify,
and was pleased to see the Madonna had a full
halo.
More, I learned that this work of
art may have been the best known such painting
during the Victorian-Edwardian era, a lovely Madonna
and Child, painted by Marianne Stokes.
Additional research gave me her full name,
Marianne Preindlsberger Stokes (18551927).
She was an Austrian painter, who settled in
England when she married a landscape painter.
Stokes was one of the leading artists of Queen
Victoria's England. Madonna and Child
was one of three paintings she created on the
same subject, each one very different from the
other.
|
|

The Nativity Window at
St. Peter's Episcopal Church, Brentwood, PA
Christmas Blessings 2011; E-card Created
& Edited by K. R. Overholt Critchfield ©
2011
|
|
Karen's Note
At the center of this 2011 e-card
is a photo of the Nativity Window at St.
Peter's Episcopal Church, Brentwood, PA, where I
was a parishioner for many years, a member of the
choir for most of those years, and at the end,
the cantor. My son Matthew had taken photographs
of all the stained-glass windows at St. Peter's,
so I expected the Nativity Window to be
a fairly easy project. However, that window was
not photographed well, for the light behind it
had faded, late that afternoon. It was necessary
to spend a whole lot of time bringing out the
colors and the shadow details, because in these
windows, the shadows tell more of the story.
You will notice that some of the
shadows are cut off at the top of the photograph,
and that is because the windows are very tall.
The lower sections can be pulled open during the
spring and summer. Occasionally, it was my duty
to close all those open panels after a service.
For the e-card, I had to cleaned up the black
lines that are part of the overall stained-glass
structure, because the picture was taken at a
slight angle. The red background, as I recall,
came from a image that was downloadable on the
Internet.
That holiday season, I felt good
about my e-card, while sending it to my family
and friends at St. Peter's. Then, a few years
later, while I was singing in the Chancel Choir
at Trinity Cathedral, downtown Pittsburgh, a
Christmas card from St. Peter's showed up pinned
to a hallway bulletin board, and lo! The
folks at St. Peter's had created Christmas cards
using a professional-looking photograph of their
window. I was impressed.
|
|

Angel and Archangels,
by Rudolf Koch (1876-1934)
Christmas Blessings 2010; E-card Created
& Edited by K. R. Overholt Critchfield ©
2010
|
|
Karen's Note
My 2010 e-card was prompted by my
Internet search for angels. My mother had passed
away in April 2010, so thoughts of heaven and
angels were often on my mind. Despite all the
angels I found in paintings, Nativity scenes and
ornaments, nothing seemed to appeal to me as an
e-card that was something definitive and
original. Finally, I turned to a little project I
put together for the children at St. Peter's
Episcopal Church, Brentwood, PA. It was an 8 1/2
x 11-inch page using angel designs created by
Rudolf Koch (1876-1934), whose work was on the
Internet. Designed for the Christmas season, the
page was intended to be handed out to children,
along with some crayons, so they could spend
their time coloring, during a couple long
Christmas services.
Rudolf Koch was mainly known in
Germany for his calligraphy and font styles, but
he also created line drawings for church uses.
For my part, I did some modest remodeling of his
stylized angels in order to fit everything on a
single page, but also made half-page versions of
each angel, so the children could choose which
individual or group of angels appealed to them
most on a cold winter's day. Then I realized my
design could also work as a Christmas e-card.
|
|

Christmas Blessings 2009;
E-card Created & Edited by K. R. Overholt
Critchfield © 2009
|
|
Karen's Note
When planning my first official
Christmas e-card, something to send around to
members of my family, friends, and Internet
friends, my inspiration came from Nativity
scenes, both paintings and three-dimensional
creche figures. I came across a picture of these
statuettes being sold on a web site, and believed
I could create something special. With this
picture, a pixel by pixel project took many days,
because once the perfect color was chosen for the
background, each figure had to be seamlessly
melded into that color. It never entered my mind
to make a note of the web page that offered this
set for sale, or the company that produced them.
I will keep looking for that data.
|
|

Madonna and Child in a Rose
Arbor, by Martin Schongauer (1450-1491)
Christmas Blessings 2004; E-card Created
& Edited by K. R. Overholt Critchfield ©
2004
|
|
Karen's Note
When I was putting together the Christmas
Blessings web page, I remembered that my
first attempt at designing a Christmas e-card was
for Karen's Branches in 2004. It was
created for Christmas 2004, but then was
published late, in my InterOverholt Memo
of January 2005. A small picture found on the
Internet, plus a photo of a red velvet bookcover
came together for this e-card. The photo seemed
historically old enough to allow me to make some
modifications. Specifically, the fact that in the
original, the Madonna looked somewhat bald at the
top of her head bothered me, so I added some
hair. The modified picture included my visual
poem, One, which was arranged to look
like a candle. It was a case of putting two
thoughts into one, so to speak. I wanted the poem
to be shaped like a candle, because of a song's
refrain that I learned as a very young child:
"If everyone lit just one little candle,
what a bright world this would be!"
Recently, after hours of
searching the Internet, I discovered the artist
of the original work of art. Martin Schongauer
(1450-1491) created Madonna and Child in a
Rose Arbor (1473), a work of tempera on wood
(201 x 112 cm), at Saint-Martin, Colmar. The
painting is surrounded by an intricate wood
carving. It is also known as Madonna in the
Rose Garden (1472), and in Deutsch,
the title is Maria im Rosenhag (1473).
So there are three different titles and two
different dates. One web site showed a really
fine photograph of the actual three-dimensional
work, a much better photo than the small one I
found in 2004. My e-card version is a really poor
expression of the original. A photo given at
another web site was modified and too garish, and
the birthdate given for the artist was c.1445,
not 1450. Yet, another paragraph states,
"Schongauer was born in about 1440 in
Colmar, Alsace ...." He lived a long time
ago, but his paintings and engravings are still
treasured.
|
|
~ End of Page ~ Return to Karen's
Branches
|