Category: religion

Leon Joseph-Florentine Bonnat

Leon Joseph-Florentine Bonnat, “Study for Jacob Wrestling with the Angel”, 1876, Pencil and Black Chalk on Paper, 14 x 20 Inches, Dahesh Museum of Art, New York

This is either a highly finished study for, or a variant after, a painting that Bonnat exhibited at the Salon in 1876, current location unknown. With its emphasis on tensed musculature and the interaction of anatomical forms, this work illustrates perfectly how integral the numerous life drawings of nude male models were to an artist’s formation of fully realized narrative compositions.

As an artist and a teacher, Bonnat was adamant in the fundamental importance of skillful drawing. In a letter translated and published in The American Magazine of Art in 1916, Bonnat declared: “Drawing and form: from those foundations we never stray; we cannot, we ought not to, because they are the conditions absolutely requisite to eternal beauty; and from antique art to contemporary, in passing through all the great epochs…it is by form and drawing alone that the world has been enriched with so many masterpieces.”

Carlo Crivelli

Carlo Crivelli, “Saint Stephen”, 1476, Tempera and Gilding on Panel, national Gallery, London

Carlo Crivelli painted in tempera only, despite the increasing popularity of oil painting during his lifetime, and on panels, though some of his paintings have since been transfered to canvas. His predilection for decoratively punched gilded backgrounds is one of the marks of this conservative taste, in part imposed by his patrons. Of his early polyptychs, only one, the altarpiece from Ascoli Piceno, survives in its entirety in its original frame. All the others have been disassembled and their panels and predella scenes are divided among several museums.

This panel showing Saint Stephen is part of the large “Demidoff Altarpiece” made for the high altar of San Domenico in Ascoli Piceno, east-central Italy.

Saint Stephen was the first Christian martyr. He was a lay assistant to the priest of the first Christian community in 1st-century Palestine and was responsible for a daily distribution of food to the poor. Accused of blasphemy against Moses and God, he was tried by a religious council. As he spoke in defence of his belief in Christ as the Messiah, those watching him saw the face of an angel. Enraged, the council stopped the trial and took him out of the city where he was stoned to death.

Tribal Ritual Eshu

Tribal Ritual Eshu, Date Unknown, Wood and Seeds, Yoruba Tribe, Nigeria

An Orisha is a spirit who reflects one of the subordinate manifestations of the supreme deity. The Orisha are said to have previously existed in the spirit world or as human beings, recognized as deities upon their deaths due to extraordinary feats on Earth.

Eshu partially serves as an alternate name for Eleggua, the messenger for all Orishas. There are 256 paths to Eleggua—each one of which is an Eshu. It is believed that Eshu is an Orisha similar to Elugga, but there are only 101 paths to Eshu according to ocha, rather than the 256 paths to Eleggua according to Ifá. Eshu is known as the “Father who gave birth to Ogboni”, and is also thought to be agile and always willing to rise to a challenge.

Calendar: July 1

A Year: Day to Day Men: 1st of July

Sitting with Clasped Hands

July 1, 1535 is the starting day of the trial of Sir Thomas More.

Thomas More began his studies at Oxford University in 1492, at the age of fourteen, receiving a classical education and becoming proficient in both Latin and Greek. At his father’s insistence he left Oxford after two years to study law at New Inn, a place of initial training for barristers. More became a student in 1496 at Lincoln’s Inn, a professional association for barristers, until 1502 when he was deemed qualified as a barrister.

Thomas More lived for a year near the Carthusian Monastery, joined the monks’ spiritual exercised and contemplated joining the order. However, he decided to remain a layman, standing instead for election to a position in Parliament in 1504 and marrying Jane Colt the following year.  More was elected to Parliament to represent Great Yarmouth, a coastal area in Western England, and later elected in 1510 to represent London.

Thomas More was knighted and made under-treasurer of the Exchequer in 1521, becoming increasingly influential as a personal advisor to King Henry VIII. More succeeded to the office of Lord Chancellor in 1529 when that post became vacant. He strongly supported the Catholic Church and saw the Protestant Reformation as heresy and a threat to the church, particularly the theology of Martin Luther and William Tydale.

More opposed King Henry VIII’s separation from the Catholic Church: he refused to acknowledge King Henry as the Supreme Head of the Church of England, Henry VIII established the church after Pope Paul III had excommunicated the king over his divorce from his wife Catherine of Aragon. After refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy to Henry as required, Thomas More was put on trial for treason.

More was an experienced judge and lawyer who had prepared himself for his final trial over several years. At this trial, he was determined to bring all of his experience and training to bear—to defend not only himself and his family, but also his country, his church, the English tradition of law, and the future of Christendom.

On July 1, 1535, he appeared before fifteen judges and twelve jurors. Despite the impressive numbers, however, this trial was not to be impartial. Thomas More aptly discredited all of the government’s evidence and established the credibility of his own character. The total lack of viable evidence against More proved to be totally irrelevant. The jury took only fifteen minutes to render its verdict: “Guilty.” He was sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered; but the King commuted this to execution by decapitation. The execution took place on 6 July 1535.

Dog Effigy

Dog Effigy Ceramic Pot, Date Unknown, Mexico, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland

Among the Aztecs of highland Mexico, dogs were associated with the deity Xolotl, the god of death. This deity and a dog were believed to lead the soul on its journey to the underworld. The Mexica also associated Xolotl with the planet Venus as the evening star and the twin brother of the deity QuetzalcГіatl, who personified Venus as the morning star. The dog’s special relationship with humans is highlighted by a number of Colima dog effigies wearing humanoid masks.

This curious effigy type has been interpreted as a shamanic transformation image or as a reference to the modern Huichol myth of the origin of the first wife, who was transformed from a dog into a human. However, recent scholarship suggests a new explanation of these sculptures as the depiction of the animal’s tonalli, its inner essence, which is made manifest by being given human form via the mask. The use of the human face to make reference to an object’s or animal’s inner spirit is found in the artworks of many ancient cultures of the Americas, from the Inuit of Alaska and northern Canada to peoples in Argentina and Chile.

The Wood Dragon

Chinese Carved and Painted Wooden Dragon, 1880, Wood, 11 x 34 x 13 Inches

This Chinese sea dragon is from the late 19th century, most likely being a temple carving for above a doorway. It portrays an undulating movement in its form, with the head turned back to the scaled, serpentine body. The mouth is open in a smile and the eyes are large with eyelashes. It is painted in strong reds and greens with gilt highlights.

Jakob Bohme

Jakob Bohme, “Theosphische Wercke (Theosophical Work)”, 1682, Amsterdam

Jakob Bohme was a German mystic, philosopher and Christian theosophist. His influence was evident in Germany, the Netherlands and England, as well as in Sweden and Finland. Among the Quakers in the United States, he also found enthusiastic followers. In 1682, fifty-eight years after his death,  all of his works were published together for the first time. This image illustrates the wheel of properties of the seven planets.

Calendar: May 8

A Year: Day to Day Men: 8th of May

Catching the Last of the Rays

May 8, 1639 was the birthdate of Giovanni Battista Gaulli, the Italian artist of the High Baroque and early Rococo periods.

In mid-17th century, Gaulli’s Genoa was a cosmopolitan Italian artistic center open to both commercial and artistic enterprises from north European countries, including countries with non-Catholic populations such as England and the Dutch provinces. Painters such as Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck stayed in Genoa for a few years. Gaulli’s earliest influences would have come from an eclectic mix of these foreign painters and other local artists including Valerio Castello and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione.

The election of a new General of the Jesuit order, Gian Paolo Oliva, put into motion the artistic decoration of the Church of the Gesù, the mother church of the Society of Jesuits. With Gian Bernini’s support and his guidance thereafter, Oliva awarded the prestigious commission to the 22-year-old Giovanni Gaulli. The original contract stipulated the dome was to be completed in two years, and the remainder by the end of ten years. Gaulli’s main vault fresco was unveiled on Christmas Eve, 1679. After this, he continued frescoing of the vaults of the tribune and other areas in the church until 1685.

Gaulli’s nave masterpiece, the “Triumph of the Sacred Name of Jesus”, is an allegory of the work of the Jesuits that envelops worshippers or the observers below into the whirlwind of devotion. Swirling figures in the dark entry border of the composition frame the ‘open’ sky, ever rising upward toward a celestial vision of infinite depth. The light from Jesus’ name and symbol of the Jesuit order is gathered by patrons and saints above the clouds; while in the darkness below, a fusillade of brilliance scatters heretics, as if smitten by blasts of the Last Judgement. The great theatrical effect here, inspired and developed under his mentor Bernini, prompted critics to label Giovanni Gaulli a “Bernini in paint”.

Gaulli’s frescoes were a tour-de-force in illusionary painting, depicting the church’s roof opening up above the viewer; and the panorama is viewed in true perspective when seen from below. Gaulli’s ceiling is a masterpiece of architectural illusionism, combining stuccoed and painted figures and architecture. Bernini’s pupil Antonio Raggi provided the stucco figures. From the nave floor, it is difficult to distinguish painted from stucco angels. The figural composition spill over the frame’s edges which only heightens the illusion of the faithful rising miraculously toward the light above.

Carlo Crivelli

Carlo Crivelli, “Madonna and Child”, 1480, Tempera and Gold on Panel, 37.7 x 25.4 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Carlo Crivelli was probably the most individual of the 15th century Venetian painters, an artist whose highly personal and mannered style carried Renaissance forms into an unusual expressionism.

Crivelli’s works were exclusively sacred in subject. Although his classical, realistic figure types and symmetrical compositions follow the conventions of Renaissance painting, his unusual overall treatment transforms these conventions into a personal expression that is both highly sensuous and strongly Gothic in spirit. Crivelli’s figures, clad in richly patterned brocades that are painted with an almost incredible attention to detail, are closely crowded together in sumptuously ornamental settings to produce flat, hieratic compositions that are devotional and removed from the world of the viewer.

His unique use of sharp outlines surrounding every form and the excessive pallor and flawlessness of complexion in his figures give his scenes the quality of shallow sculptured relief. There is an exaggerated expression of feeling in the faces of his figures, usually pensive and dreamy but sometimes distorted with grief, and in the mannered gestures of their slender hands and spidery fingers; this expression is closer to the religious intensity of Gothic art than to the calm rationalism of the Renaissance.

In this painting the troupe-l’oeil details are played against the doll-like prettiness of the Madonna. The apples and fly are symbols of sin and evil and are opposed to the cucumber and the goldfinch, symbols of redemption. Crivelli’s signature is painted on what looks like a piece of paper attached to the watered-silk cloth with wax.

Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva

Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, Date Unknown, Location Unknown

“Two things are to be practiced on the level of relative bodhichitta: meditation on the equality of self and other, and meditation on the exchange of self and other. Without training in the former, the latter is impossible. This is why Shāntideva says that we should first meditate strenuously on equality of self and other; for without it, a perfectly pure altruistic attitude cannot arise. All beings, ourselves included, are in exactly the same predicament of wanting to be happy and not wanting to suffer. For this reason we must vigorously train in ways to develop the intention to protect others as much as ourselves, creating happiness and dispelling suffering. We may think that this is impossible, but it isn’t.”
― Śāntideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva 

Calendar: March 22

A Year: Day to Day Men: 22nd of March

The Fire Fighter

The Emerald Buddha was moved with great ceremony on March 22, 1784 to His current place in Wat Phra Kaew, Thailand.

Phra Kaeo Morakot, the Emerald Buddha, is considered the palladium of the Kingdom of Thailand; an figure of great antiquity on which the safety of Thailand is said to depend. The figure of the meditating Buddha seated in a yogic posture is made of semi-precious jade, clothed in gold and 26 inches tall in His seated position. Historical sources indicate the the figure of the Buddha surfaced in northern Thailand in the Lanna kingdom in 1434.

In 1779, the Thai General Chao Phraya Chakri put down an insurrection, captured Vientiane, the capital of Laos where the Buddha had resided for 214 years, and took the Emerald Buddha to Siam. It was installed in a shrine close to Wat Arun in Thonburi, Siam’s new capital. Chao Phraya Chakri took control of the country and founded the Chakri Dynasty of Rattanakosin Kingdom. He adopted the title ‘Rama I’ and shifted his capital across the Menam Chao Phra River to its present location in Bangkok.

There Rama I constructed the new Grand Palace including Wat Phra Kaew within its compound. Wat Phra Kaew was consecrated in 1784, and the Emerald Buddha was moved with great pomp and pageantry to its current home in the Ubosoth, the holiest prayer room, of the Wat Phra Kaew temple complex on 22 March 1784.

The Emerald Buddha is adorned with three different sets of gold seasonal costume; two were made by King Rama I, one for the summer and one for the rainy season, and a third made by King Rama III for the winter or cool season. The clothes are changed by the King of Thailand, or another member of the royal family in his stead, in a ceremony at the changing of the seasons – in the first waning of lunar months around March, August and November.

King Rama I initiated this ritual for the hot season and the rainy season, Rama III introduced the ritual for the winter season. The robes, which adorn the figure of Buddha, represent those of monks and the King, depending on the season, a clear indication of highlighting its symbolic role “as Buddha and the King”, which role is also enjoined on the Thai King who formally dresses the Emerald Buddha image. The costume change ritual is performed by the Thai king who is the highest master of ceremonies for all Buddhist rituals.

Sonam Gyaitsen

Sonam Gyaitsen, “Thousand-Armed Avalokiteshvara”, Gilt Bronze, ca 1430, Jamchen Monastery, Tibet

The Lotus Sutra is generally accepted to be the earliest literature teaching about the doctrines of Avalokiteśvara. These are found in chapter 25. This chapter is devoted to Avalokiteśvara, describing him as a compassionate bodhisattva who hears the cries of sentient beings, and who works tirelessly to help those who call upon his name. A total of 33 different manifestations of Avalokiteśvara are described, including female manifestations, all to suit the minds of various beings.

One prominent Buddhist story tells of Avalokiteśvara vowing never to rest until he had freed all sentient beings from samsara, the wheel of birth and death. Despite strenuous effort, he realizes that still many unhappy beings were yet to be saved. After struggling to comprehend the needs of so many, his head splits into eleven pieces. Amitābha, the Celestial Buddha, seeing his plight, gives him eleven heads with which to hear the cries of the suffering. Upon hearing these cries and comprehending them, Avalokiteśvara attempts to reach out to all those who needed aid, but found that his two arms shattered into pieces. Once more, Amitābha comes to his aid and invests him with a thousand arms with which to aid the suffering multitudes.

Calendar: March 5

A Year: Day to Day Men: 5th of March

The White Stetson

On March 5, 1616, Nicolaus Copernicus’s book “On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres” is added to the index of Forbidden Books by the Roman Catholic Church.

“On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres” is the seminal work on the heliocentric (sun-centered) theory of the solar system by the Renaissance astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. The book, first printed in 1543 in Nuremberg, offered an alternative model of the universe to Ptolemy’s geocentric system (earth-centered), which had been popular since ancient times.

Copernicus argued that the universe comprised eight spheres. The outermost consisted of motionless, fixed stars, with the Sun motionless at the center. The known planets revolved about the Sun, each in its own sphere, in the order: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. The Moon, however, revolved in its sphere around the Earth. What appeared to be the daily revolution of the Sun and fixed stars around the Earth was actually the Earth’s daily rotation on its own axis.

Very soon, Copernicus’ theory was attacked with Scripture and with the common Aristotelian proofs. In 1549 Melanchthon, Martin Luther’s principal lieutenant, wrote against Copernicus, pointing to the theory’s apparent conflict with Scripture and advocating that “severe measures” be taken to restrain the impiety of Copernicans. The works of Copernicus and Zúñiga—the latter for asserting that Copernicus’ book was compatible with Catholic faith—were placed on the Index of Forbidden Books by a decree of the Sacred Congregation of March 5, 1616 (more than 70 years after its publication).

Copernicus’ book was not formally banned but merely withdrawn from circulation, pending “corrections” that would clarify the theory’s status as hypothesis. Nine sentences that represented the heliocentric system as certain were to be omitted or changed. After these corrections were prepared and formally approved in 1620 the reading of the book was permitted. But the book was never reprinted with the changes and was available in Catholic jurisdictions only to suitably qualified scholars, by special request. It remained on the Index until 1758, whenPope Benedict XIV (1740–58) removed the uncorrected book from his revised Index.