Danica's Cross "Burdens of a Saint"

This was a project for my wife’s college humanities class. She had to create an interpretive artistic “thing” inspired by an existing work of art. The piece of art she chose was an unfinished painting by Leonardo da Vinci titled St. Jerome In The Wilderness. She wrote a poem and wanted to burn it onto a cross. I did some research into Da Vinci and found that in the Vitruvian Man he used a ratio (1.656:1) very slightly different from the golden ratio so I created this cross around that ratio. Every dimension was decided by that ratio. Every joint is a 45 degree miter. A total of sixteen pieces in all with 36 miter joints. The cross is hollow and made of old cedar fence slats. There is no finish just as the painting was unfinished. The first box I glued up was done with clamps and took forever to get everything lined up just right. After that I just laid down packing tape and wrapped them closed. That worked a treat! The cross part was one piece and the top and bottom were built as their own boxes and set into the cross piece. All the miters were cut on my router table and then the end pieces were fitted with a block plane. My wife did a few of the cuts under close supervision. My wife burned the poem she had written into the cross with a soldering iron. She got a perfect 100 on the project.

-- Jason