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What no one explains to the Artist
In very plain words:
The artist connects (mostly unknowingly) to other realms, other eras, other timeframes. The artist peers into the future, the artist repurposes the past; the artist walks with the greats, past, present and future, and learns from.
And for all her pains, for all that the artist brings back from these exotic escapades, very rarely does the artist get recognition. Very rarely does she get success. Very rarely does she get fame.
But this is not what no one tells the artist. She will come to find that out on her own. If she’s lucky. And even if she doesn’t, the real pain in her life will come from an entirely different source.
What no one really tells the artist is who she really is.
What no one really tells the artist is where all her creations really come from.
What no one really tells the artist is what her art is meant for.
And so the artist assumes. And pays a steep price for it. What began as elation and motivation soon becomes a burden when it is not understood.
What once a source of living soon turns into a prison of isolation and misunderstanding.
What once could be relied on as a source of inspiration soon becomes a horror channel of surreal information and nightmarish suggestions.
All because no one ever told the artist.
But if no one tells the artist, can the artist at least ask?
Sure. Of course. That is one of the things I can encourage. And I am not one to encourage anything.
One of the reasons I don’t this is because with the encouragement I have above, I expect a follow up question like the one below:
Who does the artist ask?
I submit that this is not a very useful question; there are few people you will meet in your life capable of answering such questions.
A better question would be, ‘what does the artist ask?’
Very good. Now we are getting somewhere if you are asking this question. You have some direction you can explore.
And, if you asked the question, you likely consider yourself an artist.
An artist is a person who creates. The field of creation doesn’t matter. What she creates doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if the world is aware of the creation or not.
This is not meant to be an answer. It is not a definition. It is a direction to explore if you wish.
Here is one more.
An artist creates but she is not the creator.
11 Things Highly Creative People Sacrifice For Their Art
To be a creative can often feel like a choice that is both insane and thrilling in equal measure. There are thousands of jobs that are far more certain and stable than an artist’s work, yet true creatives know that there really is not a choice to be made. The artist must art. Therefore, the artist must find a way to live in the uncertain, wild space between what success looks like to others and what success feels like to themselves. Choosing a creative career is not something for the weak-willed, the comfort-chasers, the ones who need to know how their life will splay out ahead of them for years and years to come. Those are noble endeavors — to value comfort and security — but a creative sacrifices almost all convention in the name of art.
I doubt any of us regret it. We know that life is impermanent and we never know when our last day will be. We’d rather create the work that inspires us most and let it kill us.
1. Highly creative people sacrifice a comfortable life for a big, messy, weird, interesting life
Most creatives learn quickly that comfort and inspiration do not live harmoniously. You can have one, but not the other. Inspiration comes from action, from experimentation, from the chaos, the fire, the big wins and the big fails. In order to art and art well, you must live and live well. And, to live well is to constantly be pushing yourself out of what’s comfortable and into what’s unknown. This is the source of inspiration: whatever lay on the outer edges of comfort.
2. They sacrifice certainty for a big question mark about the future
Creatives have mastered the art of the unknown. Most of them wear this as a badge of honor, because they have learned the hard way that the best laid plans are the easiest sources of disappointment. Nothing about a creative life exists on a straight line. It’s like a squiggly line that often goes backward and then propels forward then stays in one place for an unnervingly long amount of time. There is no plan. The future is a shrug of the shoulders. The words “I don’t know” are the artist’s anthem. To not know is to be open to knowing, to be led, and the creative thrives there.
3. They sacrifice a stable life for the freedom to say yes at any moment
While creatives might have a yearning to build a life and put down roots, they know that there’s always a chance that their lives could be uprooted at any moment. Because an artist does not follow a set path, they have to be consistently open to saying YES quickly and without reservation. They have to be willing to uproot their lives in order to follow the inspiration or the opportunity whenever it comes up. Freedom is the artist’s currency.
4. They sacrifice approval from others for approval of themselves
Most art is created alone in a dark room. It’s thankless work. It’s like doing spec work constantly with the hope that, one day, it will pay off. If creatives needed approval from others to begin, they would never start (and some brilliant creatives never do start, sadly). Instead, artists know that it’s a necessity to approve of themselves, to believe in their work and, as equally important, to believe in the process. Creatives know that chasing approval will always prolong the work from ever leaving their minds, so they simply learn to give themselves the permission they may desire from others.
5. They sacrifice being accepted and understood by the world for being a visionary who may or may not be ever understood
Creatives know that any visionary work will not always be immediately understood or accepted. They accept that they may not ever be accepted or understood — yet make their art any way. They don’t look outside of themselves for the answers, for permission. They simply create whether anyone appreciates it or not.
6. They sacrifice all the “shoulds” for what their heart leads them to create
Creatives know that they can easily “should” their way into a miserable, uninspired life. They know that the world is built on “shoulds” — what this person should or shouldn’t do, how others should or shouldn’t live. Artists know that conventions and traditions hardly inspire creative work, that the only way to listen to what their heart yearns to make is to shut out the “shoulds” of the world and find their own way. This is an arduous process, to empty out themselves from all the beliefs of who they should be and, instead, to allow themselves to simply be who they are now and create what they need to create now.
7. They sacrifice constant happiness for the emotional spectrum of self-growth
Artists know that pursuing self-growth means letting go of the desire to be in a constant state of happiness. To grow is to shed old versions of self, which is to also say to grow is to be able to create new versions of art. The only way the art grows and evolves is when the artist grows and evolves. Every creative soon realizes that self-growth is a state of being and that means to be in almost constant flux. The process of evolvement has no room for holding tight to only one emotion — say, happiness — and needs to endure the entire spectrum of emotions to truly evolve. To face who they are as angry, sad, grief-stricken, resentful, bored is to allow themselves to evolve.
8. They sacrifice superficial relationships and work for vulnerable relationships and work
While creating uninspired art is something all creatives have likely had to do in their past — bills are hard — highly creative people feel even more strongly about making art from a vulnerable, real place. They know that at the heart of artistic genius is vulnerability, a brave person who is willing to be rejected, who is willing to share their soul with a world who may not be very kind to it. While creatives know that superficial work and relationships are oftentimes easier to maintain — and success is often easier to come by for the superficial — they know that art is a choice and a privilege and they always want to create from the deepest parts of themselves.
9. They sacrifice their pride for empathy and compassion
The best kind of art comes from a place of empathy and compassion, from an inherent curiosity around the human experience. Highly creative people understand that their curiosity around humanity is what brings them to the page, the instrument, the canvas, the laptop, the camera, the drawing board. Empathy does not exist with pride. It takes a certain degree of humility to have an empathic view of the world and artists understand that at the core of their work is a desire to move people with their art. This means they have a high level of respect for whoever will come into contact with their work. Creatives know that their tender heart, their empathy, their compassion is at the heart of their brilliance and they will eschew pride and arrogance in order to step deeper into that brilliance.
10. They sacrifice the perception of success for their own definition of success
From the outside, a creative’s life may not look very successful if success is defined by cultural expectations. An artist learns quickly that they must define success for themselves otherwise they will drown underneath other people’s expectations. In their conviction of self, they are free to create and build their life however they desire. Not having to “measure up” or prove anything to others is one of the most important things a creative must learn for themselves — because they could spend their entire artistic life trying to prove themselves and always come up short.
11. They sacrifice the life people told them they should have for a life they love, a life that is inspiring and fucking thrilling
Because that’s the whole point. To create is a privilege, one that artists know not to take for granted. To deny a conventional life is a risk, but not as great a risk as to deny their heart.
How the Renaissance Revolutionised Art & Creativity
An explanation of a major turning point in Western art and culture
Beginning in the early 15th century, Western culture underwent a major turning point, characterised by a new confidence in the possibilities of human thought and creativity. It was a moment in time when art became intellectualised, and artists and architects began to establish themselves as individuals with singular talents.
That turning point was the Renaissance.
What does it mean?
The word Renaissance is a familiar term in the history of art. It is a French word that comes from the Italian rinascimento, meaning “rebirth”.
In other words: there was once a birth of cultural excellence, and now, from around 1400 onwards, there emerged a rebirth of the same excellence. But a rebirth of what exactly?
The simple answer is a rebirth of the values relating to ancient culture, most especially the Classical cultures of ancient Greece and Rome.
The Renaissance centred largely around Italy, where a profound interest in classical antiquity was spurred on by the rediscovery of old texts by authors like Aristotle and Archimedes, and by the recovery of ancient sculptures that were presumed lost. Admirers of the ancient world saw the Classical past as a time of rational thought, prescient philosophical enquiry, and the emergence of human-centred systems of understanding.
With new ideas spreading, the arts began to flourish under a concentration of commissions from influential patrons, most notably the powerful Medici family which ruled Florence for more than 60 years. Many of these patrons wished to link their own status with the eminence of the ancient world and the creativity of the present one. Painters and sculptors were were in demand like never before.
In short, ancient Greece and Rome became idealised as high-points in human civilisation. To be influenced by them and to draw on their philosophies was therefore seen as the very best sign of good taste and learning.
Old books rediscovered
Several things spurred on this interest in the classical past. One of them was the rediscovery of old texts.
An example is the writings of Pliny the Elder, a Roman author who wrote an enormous encyclopaedia covering the full breadth of ancient knowledge. It is from his Natural History, published in around 77 AD, that scholars were able to read about ancient painters like Apelles and Zeuxis, whose works were praised by Pliny for their high levels of naturalism. In one story told by Pliny, Zeuxis entered a painting contest with a rival artist; when he unveiled his painting of a bunch of grapes, birds flew down to peck at the fruit, so lifelike was their appearance.
Stories like this gave the classical past a certain idealised character which artists wished to imitate and learn from.
In architecture and sculpture too, the vocabulary of antique forms and their a search for a perfect harmony of parts inspired the likes of Filippo Brunelleschi, who would go on to build the famous dome of Florence Cathedral. The rediscovery of Vitruvius’ The Ten Books of Architecture (written between 30 and 15 BC) meant that the architectural principles of antiquity could be observed and developed in detail.
People on the move
One of the key factors in the emergence of the Renaissance was the way ideas moved around the European continent as people travelled.
One major event was the conquest of Constantinople (now Istanbul) by Ottoman soldiers in 1453. Before this point, Constantinople had been the capital city of Byzantium, otherwise known as the Eastern Roman Empire — an extension of the Roman Empire into eastern territories that had lasted for a thousand years, even beyond the fall of the Western Roman Empire in Rome.
As a major city situated between Europe and the Middle East, Constantinople had become home to large numbers of ancient texts, many written in their original Greek. When the attacking Ottoman army overtook the city, refugees made their escape and travelled west. Along with their personal possessions, they took with them valuable items relating to their culture and community, including numerous Greek texts.
Humanism in Italy
In numerous respects, Italy was ripe for the seeds of ancient learning to take root. It was one of the most prosperous countries in Europe thanks to extensive trade routes throughout the Mediterranean. Florence, above all, was extremely wealthy and supported a strata of diplomats and scholars who were well-versed in Latin and Greek.
Within this fertile setting, a new movement known as humanism began to emerge. Humanism promoted the idea that man was the centre of his own universe, and that the achievements of literature, art, rational thought and science should begin to rival the dominancy of the Christian worldview.
One such individual central to the humanist movement was Leonardo Bruni (1370-1444). With careful reading of ancient texts, Bruni came up with his own version of how society should be organised, based on ideals of civic virtue and the forms of government found in ancient Athens and the Roman Republic.
Bruni exemplified the Renaissance concept of humanism, a belief in the potential of human beings to order themselves more wisely and to live more fairly and prosperously. Bruni’s translations of Aristotle’s Politics and Nicomachean Ethics were widely distributed in manuscript and in print.
Ancient artefacts reconsidered
The Belvedere Torso was a fragmentary statue carved sometime around the 1st century BC. It was rediscovered at the beginning of the 15th century in Rome, most likely excavated from among the ancient ruins. Over the course of the next hundred years, the marble sculpture gained admirers and went on to become a significant point of reference for Michelangelo and many other artists working in Renaissance Italy.
The Belvedere Torso was one of many works whose style and technique were thought to express the perfection of the ancient past. After its discovery, the statue slowly began to attract the attention of artists and scholars, many of whom made detailed drawings of the object.
For the artist Michelangelo especially, the life-likeness of the sculpture, combined with the way it idealises the male form, was symbolic of the sculptor’s powers of creation. He admired the contorted pose of the torso, how it twists around on itself to bring out the muscularity of the whole body. It indicated to him how an artist can mirror nature and even transcend it to become an independent and creative force through his own endeavour.
It’s not surprising, therefore, to see the influence of the Belvedere Torso in Michelangelo’s own art, some of which have gone on to become the most famous images ever made.
In the scene of The Creation of Adam painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in around 1511, Adam’s body is reminiscent of the ancient statue. The muscular definition of Adam’s torso and the way that the upper and lower halves of the body are turned to allow Michelangelo to delineate the structure of the muscles, have their roots in the Belvedere sculpture.
Similarly, in The Last Judgement fresco, painted on the end wall of the Sistine Chapel, the figure identified as Saint Bartholomew — who, rather morbidly, is seen holding the knife of his martyrdom and his flayed skin — assumes a posture that is clearly drawn from the Belvedere model.
Most noticeably is the arrangement of the Saint’s legs, which sit astride the cloud. Michelangelo used variations of this posture in several of his sculptures as well as in his paintings. The marble statue of Victory (c.1519) and the Rebellious Slave (1513) both adopt a similarly turn-twist motion, with the legs askew and the upper body turned to one side.
The Belvedere Torso remained popular with artists across the centuries that followed. In the 17th century, the painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) made sketches of the statue, whose monumental energy can clearly be seen in his overall painting style.
Later, in the 18th century, Antonio Canova (1757–1822) continued to draw inspiration from the torso for his Neo-classical sculptures. And in the 19th century, the sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) is thought to have used the Belvedere statue as inspiration for his work The Thinker.
And so it’s possible to trace the chain of influence — from a lost ancient Greek sculpture, to a Roman copy made by Apollonius, itself lost until its rediscovery in Renaissance Rome, through the various artworks made by subsequent generations of painters and sculptors. In this way, the Belvedere Torso helps us to understand how ancient Classical art was venerated by European artists, and how its influence helped shape the art of the last 500 years.
The effect of historians
It is perhaps easy to imagine that the events which we now call the Renaissance were somehow a triumphant revolution in intellectual life.
Yet many modern historians have begun to reconsider this idea, arguing that the so-called “Dark Ages” or Middle Ages out of which the Renaissance emerged were not quite as dark as once supposed. An example might be the soaring gothic cathedrals of the High and Late Middle Ages, hugely impressive achievements that went out of favour in the mid-15th century.
Likewise, the Islamic Golden Age that occurred across North Africa and the Middle East, as mentioned above, was a period of cultural and scientific flourishing, traditionally dated from the 8th century to the 14th century.
In fact, it would take several influential historians to make it seem as if the Renaissance was a more radical break with the past than the evidence suggests. As such, we have to except that to some degree the Renaissance was an invention of historians as much as a reality.
Jacob Burckhardt’s The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy (1860) remained the principle guide for late 19th century students of the subject and provides one of the defining accounts of the Renaissance. Through his in-depth study of the individual components of the Italian state, Burckhardt established the Italian Renaissance as a period of world-historical significance, a homogenous moment delivered on a national scale — and with it, a sharp break from the Middle Ages that came before.
Ongoing debates
There is no doubt that the Renaissance was a profound cultural movement that affected European life in all intellectual spheres. What is disputed is the exact beginnings and ending of the movement, and to what extent it was an Italian phenomena or if it was continent-wide.
Terms like the Northern Renaissance capture important intellectual events that were taking place north of the Alps, from Netherlandish painting to Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the first movable-type printing press. The idea of a Renaissance in the north counterbalances the Italy-centric view of the period.
Nevertheless, the term Renaissance remains a widely recognised label for the multifaceted period that came before the modern era. With far-reaching developments in science and astronomy, and most especially art, alongside the decline of the feudal system and the growth of commerce, the Renaissance must be understood as a vital cornerstone of Western history
Ann Treboux
How to Read Paintings: The Alba Madonna by Raphael
A masterpiece of composition and powerful elegance
I find that the more you look at this painting, The Alba Madonna by Raphael, the more compelling it becomes.
Let your eyes explore the shape and form of the Virgin Mary’s blue cloak, for instance. See how it gently dominates the scene, not only unifying the three figures in the picture by holding them within its folds, but also seeming to rest so naturally around Mary’s form, over her outstretched leg and onto the ground beneath her.
The effect is not only to create a harmonious composition, but also to establish the peace and integrity of the holy family — Mary, Jesus and John the Baptist — in visual form.
Raphael has the somewhat dubious distinction of being called a “perfect” painter. So many of his works have the aspects of serenity and inner harmony that it can be all too easy to stop looking at them with any degree of scrutiny. He was not a painter of mysterious or violent scenes. Instead, his artistic efforts went in search of a different type of mystery — a pursuit of harmonious beauty. Yet it was a search that is no less fascinating.
Images of the Virgin Mary and Christ as a young child — otherwise known as the Madonna and Child — have a long history in Western art. The earliest examples can be found in the Christian catacombs in Rome that date as far back as the 3rd century. This painting, made in around 1510, marks one of the great achievements in Renaissance art.
Perhaps what is initially most striking about the Alba Madonna painting its the circular form. This is a so-called “tondo” painting, from the Italian rotondo meaning “round”.
Numerous legends sprung up over the centuries that sought to explain why Raphael painted in the tondo-form. Most of them rehearse the cliche of the itinerant artist moving from place to place, who, thanks to his spontaneity and exceptional talent, was able to paint on anything that came to hand — in this case, a circular panel from a wooden barrel.
In truth, Raphael was a far more considered artist than these stories give him credit for. To have simply grabbed the first piece of wood that came his way was wholly unlikely. In fact, the tondo-form was popular in Florentine painting, and had its roots in Greek antiquity.
Raphael made numerous sketched studies for the Alba Madonna, and these show that the tondo-form was present in his thoughts throughout the planning process.
The sketches also offer a crucial insight into Raphael’s working technique, not least how he worked through various ideas of the composition, looking for ways to interlock the three figures in a rhythmic pattern within the circle.
The Alba Madonna is notable for showing Mary sat on the ground next to a tree stump. This follows the lesser-known tradition in Christian art known as the “Madonna of Humility”, in which images of the Virgin show her sat on the floor or on a low cushion, indicating her humbleness.
Raphael worked especially hard to arrange the three figures in a harmonious group, using their line-of-sight to forms an intimate and rhythmic unity. He also learned from artists around him. The upturned gaze of John the Baptist, for example, was a technique common in paintings from Urbino, where Raphael first trained under the artist Perugino.
Composition always played a vital role in Raphael’s work. The precise arrangement of elements in the painted space give his work an inner unity and structural balance. See how, for example, the head of John the Baptist is slightly larger than that of Christ, as a means of balancing out the interplay of looking, and how Jesus holds John’s staff, so physically linking the figures.
Perhaps more than any other artist of his generation, Raphael made use of geometrical shapes in his compositions to elevate his art towards the Renaissance ideal of mathematical harmony. A few year before making the Alba Madonna, Raphael painted the Madonna of the Meadow (Madonna del Prato), also known as the Madonna del Belvedere after the Viennese castle where it hung for many years.
In this work, there is an obvious pyramidal composition. Mary’s head creates the top of a triangle shape; the points of the base are made by her extended right foot and the toes of John the Baptist (bottom-left). There is an inner triangle too, formed between the two children and the shape of Mary’s reaching arm. The unified format gives the work an architectural structure, yet with an inner movement provided by the smaller triangle.
As Raphael’s work grew in maturity, his reliance on the pyramid evolved into a more complex blend of structural elements. In the The Alba Madonna, the triangular composition is still present, but it is allowed to flex with a degree of musicality that is new to Raphael’s work. An elliptical movement between various points of interest creates a beautiful rhythm across the work.
The year Raphael made the Alba Madonna, he’d been in Rome for two years. He’d moved there in 1508, summoned by Pope Julius II to decorate the personal apartments in the Vatican. Before Rome, Raphael had based himself in Florence, which was one of the great artistic centres of Italy at the time. Raphael he learned from Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, and in the spirit of the times, imitated many of their techniques in his own work.
The end painting, then, was not arrived at by chance or spontaneous inspiration, but by a careful and thorough working-out. The sketches he made in preparation for the painting also confirm the manner in which Raphael looked to other artists for inspiration, conforming to the prevailing theory of the times in which learning from other artists was seen as essential for creativity and invention. Vasari put is like this: “The most gracious Raphael of Urbino, who, studying the works of old and modern masters, took the best from all, and having gathered them together, enriched the art of painting with that complete perfection.”
Ann Treboux
Rebuilding an Identity: How Renaissance Architecture Reflected Italy
Rebuilding an Identity: How Renaissance Architecture Reflected Italy
Introduction
The architecture of Italy has always reflected the evolving culture of its people, a fact most easily seen in the major changes that took place during the Italian Renaissance. Leaving the design and cultural philosophies of the Medieval era in the past, Renaissance architects moved towards designs based on rationality, order, and a return to the Classical styles of the Greeks and Romans. This change in building styles reflected the changing priorities of Italian culture; where the Medieval period was focused on Buon Comune, or Common Good, of society, Renaissance sensibilities prioritized individualism and humanism. Civic duty was still a valued part of Italian life, as it was in the Medieval period, but Renaissance philosophy promoted the idea that every citizen was entitled to civic participation on some level, and that governments ought to be open and inviting to the people, rather than separate and imposing.
Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore
Florence, Italy
As such, architects in the Renaissance designed buildings to reflect these changing attitudes. Architecture in Renaissance Italy was a thriving crossroads of religion, philosophy, science, and politics. Whether designing buildings and whole cities from scratch, as in the case of the Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence and the city of Pienza, or recontextualizing Medieval architecture within the Renaissance’s sensibilities, as in the case of Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, architects played a major role in adapting and advancing the cultural changes that Italians were experiencing.
Palazzo Vecchio
The dominating feature of the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, Italy, is undoubtedly the Palazzo Vecchio (1298-1314). With its towering offset clock tower and crenelated walls, a keen viewer can easily guess as to its history as a fortress. It is decidedly not of the Renaissance; rather, it is a product of a more authoritarian, Medieval Florence. Palazzo Vecchio was designed to be imposing, to separate the city’s ruler from the common people. Its design is in many ways the antithesis of Renaissance philosophy. Yet, the Palazzo Vecchio continued as Florence’s seat of power throughout the Renaissance, and acts as the City Hall today. Rather than abandon it, architects and city planners recontextualized the Palazzo Vecchio, building around it the Piazza della Signoria, a decidedly Renaissance space.
From left to right: Loggia dei Lanzi, Piazza della Signoria, and Palazzo Vecchio
Designed by Benci di Cione and Simone Talenti between 1376 and 1382, the Loggia dei Lanzi was built directly adjacent to Palazzo Vecchio, and perfectly represents the Renaissance ideals in architecture. Made up of three open-air arched portions, the Loggia is symmetrical and orderly per the rational design philosophy. Unlike the Palazzo, it is open and inviting to all citizens, with plenty of space and wide steps allowing for many visitors at once. It contains multiple sculptures representing some of the best of the Renaissance period, particularly Cellini’s Perseus with the Head of Medusa and Giambologna’s Rape of the Sabine Women. All of the art in the Loggia is freely available to the entire citizenry of Florence, reflecting the openness and inclusiveness characterized by the period. With the inclusion of the Loggia dei Lanzi and other Renaissance style renovations to Piazza della Signoria, architects and city planners of the time were able to successfully fold Palazzo Vecchio into the Renaissance identity of Florence.
Ospedale degli Innocenti
Another seminal work of Renaissance architecture in Florence was directly inspired by the Loggia dei Lanzi: the Ospedale degli Innocenti, as designed by Filippo Brunelleschi. Supposedly, Brunelleschi was deeply inspired by the uniformity and rationality of the repeating arches of the Loggia, and so designed the Ospedale degli Innocenti with the Loggia’s themes of rationality and openness in mind. In fact, the very first thing Brunelleschi designed and built was a loggia for his new Ospedale (see left), one which directly built upon the design used in the Loggia dei Lanzi. The loggia is quite long, dominating the entire Eastern side of the Piazza Santissima Annunziata.
The loggia of the Ospedale degli Innocenti went on to define the styling of the Piazza as a whole, with Michelozzo building an atrium and central bay for the Santissima Annunziata in 1454 purposefully based on Brunelleschi’s designs. In 1516, architects Antonio de Sangallo the Elder and Baccio d’Agnolo followed suit by designing the building on the opposite side of the piazza from the Ospedale’s loggia also within Brunelleschi’s design style. With all four sides of the square completed, Piazza Santissima Annunziata now stands as a unified example of Renaissance ethos, a perfectly rational square emulating the classical design choices of the Romans. In particular, the broad stairs that are present on either side of the square emulate stadium seating, giving the Piazza the feeling of a Roman amphitheater, an identity reinforced by the arcades with Classical pilasters.
Brunelleschi built on the existing design and functional traditions of Florence when designing the Ospedale degli Innocenti, with the most obvious inspiration coming from Florence’s Ospedale di Mateo, built at the end of the 14th Century. Impressively Brunelleschi incorporated and improved upon all of the functionality present in the Ospedale di Mateo, while giving the Ospedale degli Innocenti a unique identity rooted in the Renaissance philosophy. While the loggia serves as a monumental statement piece of the Ospedale, the interior serves all the different functions required by its inhabitants. What’s more, it incorporates the concept of cloisters into its design well past the principle of separation. Brunelleschi’s designs create an interior cloister that is cut off from every other part of Florence so that no exterior building can be seen from inside, no matter the angle one stands at. This artificial feeling of tranquility and isolation in the middle of a major city reflected the dual nature of the Renaissance itself, focused not only on functional rationalism, but on perfect form and idealized aesthetics.
Pienza
The Renaissance harmony found in Piazza Santissima Annunziata was not unique to one Piazza though. In fact, an entire city was able to accomplish this feat, the city of Pienza. Designed by Pope Pius and his architect Bernardo Rossellino, Pienza is the embodiment of Renaissance architecture, with around forty significant buildings being designed and constructed between 1459 and 1464. The city is designed around the central Piazza Pio Il, with all the buildings bearing specific features to link them together. As composer uses leitmotifs to build connective tissue between movements of a symphony, so to did Pope Pius and Rossellino use features like cross windows, doorframes, and pilasters to create a city united in its Renaissance identity. The piazza itself is designed with the humanist and commercial priorities of the Renaissance in mind, with broad streets and many entrances, making it easy for vendors and customers to come and go as they please. From the Piazza Pio Il outward, Pienza was rebuilt as the architectural embodiment of Renaissance principles.
Conclusion
One of the defining characteristics of Italy will always be its arts, and the architecture of the Renaissance is no exception. The buildings and city-planning perfectly reflected the humanist, rationalist priorities of philosophers, artists, and politicians of the time, and by extent the overall culture of Italy. These grand traditions have certainly carried into the modern day, and informed Italian culture in a way that not many other nations have been affected by their own past. Perhaps more so than any other people, to understand where they are and where they will go, it is most important to look at Italy’s past, both architecturally and otherwise.
Resources
Argan, G.C. “The Architecture of Brunelleschi and the Origins of the Perspective Theory in the Fifteenth Century.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol. 9, 1946, pp. 96–121.
Bohn, B., Saslow, James M, ProQuest, & Ebrary, Inc. (2013). A Companion to Renaissance and Baroque Art.
Friedman, D., & American Council of Learned Societies. (1988). Florentine New Towns : Urban Design in the Late Middle Ages.
Gromort, Georges. Italian Renaissance Architecture; a Short Historical and Descriptive Account, with a Series of 110 Photographs and Measured Drawings, and 45 Illustrations in the Text, Translated from the French by George F. Waters. A. Vincent, 1922, 1922.
Mack, Charles Randall. “Pienza as an Urban Statement.” Pienza. Cornell University Press, 2019. 156-164.
The Painting That Shocked the World
Can art change the world?
People often talk about the ‘power of art’ and by that they often mean power as a subjective experience, the power of art to move. Art historians also understand art in terms of the power it imbues — the art adorned on the walls of palaces and even banks is like the purple robe of an emperor: it speaks of money, prestige and even domination. But in those two respects art doesn’t have much “power” at all.
The power in both cases is external (extrinsic) to the art. In the former case it only has power over any given individual and the measure of that subjective power therefore varies from person to person. It’s therefore a power that’s dependent on the baggage that comes with each person. The same goes for art as an “adornment” or “signifier” of power – it is contingent on the prerequisite real-world power with which it has a mutually beneficial relationship.
In both cases, art is not really changing anything. So how could art change the world? Such a power would be intrinsic — or inherent — in the art, not extrinsic or dependent on other kinds of power. When we look at certain dramatic moments in the history of art we very quickly realise that art does have the power to change the world to a greater or lesser extent. That power resides in art’s ability to reframe and refocus. I can explain….
We have lived in a world saturated by visual culture for hundreds of years. For the most part the purpose of that culture, broadly speaking, serves to tell us a story. It’s the story of who we are and what our place is in the world. Most of this culture — 99.9% of it — is anodyne, innocuous and beige, it simply conforms to the story we are led to believe is the right one, it makes us feel secure and safe and sometimes righteous.
Most religious art and the art of the state and advertising is that kind of culture: it reflects a reality that simultaneously makes us sure of our place in the world and conforms to the world view of the powers that be. Occasionally artists kick against conformity and show us a different kind of reality – a reality that makes us uncomfortable, that perhaps shows the world slipping from the grip of the powers that be.
In the Louvre in Paris you’ll find an example of such a work: a work that shocked, aroused debate, that gave the establishment a bloody nose. It’s The Raft of Medusa by Théodore Géricault. To explore the intrinsic power of this monumental painting, it’s first worth examining the story of its genesis: the story of La Méduse.
A Nation with Little Hope
After the defeat of Napoleon and his forced exile in 1814, the revolutionary Republic was destroyed and the Bourbon Dynasty restored. King Louis XVIII took his place on the French throne with the support of the British, who believed he could restore peace in Europe.
Contrary to this expectation, Louis XVIII was briefly deposed again during the “Hundred Days” in 1815, when Napoleon returned from exile to fight again (he was finally defeated by the Seventh Coalition at Waterloo). The shock of the Hundred Days compelled the British to help Louis XVIII consolidate power over his nation by handing over the captured port of Saint-Louis, a rich trading post on the coast of Senegal, in 1816.
The 40-gun frigate Medusa (La Méduse) fought briefly in the Napoleonic wars but after the restoration the ship was repurposed and given a non-military mission. The vessel was part of a flotilla of four ships to take officials of the new regime to the colony. On board were around 400 people including soldiers, settlers and the governor designate of Senegal.
The ship was captained by the 53 year old Vicomte Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys, an aristocrat and old royalist émigré who had not been at sea for twenty years. Despite his lack of experience, de Chaumareys was given the captaincy of this important mission by the King simply for being a loyal royalist.
A couple of hundred miles off the coast of Africa the ship ran aground and became stuck in a sandbank. A huge makeshift raft was constructed for the ship to jettison cargo in order to free itself. But when a storm came and the crew feared the ship would break up, the captain ordered an immediate evacuation. However, there was a problem: the ship didn’t have enough lifeboats.
A plan was made for the travellers with higher social status — including the captain, of course — to be transported on the few lifeboats while 146 men and one woman were towed on the huge raft that was intended for cargo. For sustenance, those 147 people were given a bag of biscuits, two casks of water and six casks of wine.
The sheer weight of all those people caused the raft to submerge and food was thrown into the sea to lighten the load. What happened next is still a shocking event in French history, a horror among the horrors of colonialism.
Nobody knows for sure, but it is thought that the lifeboats -loaded up as they were with VIPs- panicked when it was thought that the raft would slow them down too much. The ropes were cut at some point leaving the raft, laden with the 147 people, adrift at sea.
When the raft was picked up thirteen days later, only fifteen men had survived and five died soon after. The people left adrift on the raft were already hungry and thirsty at the moment the ropes were cut. They chewed their belts to stave off hunger, they started to fight over the meagre supplies controlled by the officers.
When the casks of wine had been finished, there was a drunken mutiny, dozens of men were shot and stabbed, halving the number of those alive in just one night. During the skirmishes, what was left of the water was lost. The weak and dying were thrown overboard. Eventually, when despair set in, the taboo of cannibalism was broken and men began to eat the bodies of the dead.
The stories told by two of the survivors became an international scandal at a time that the nation was very uncomfortable with the restored regime. Captain de Chamereys was found to blame for the incident and was court-martialed, but the lingering feeling was that the Medusa incident was a metaphor for the French nation in the post-Napoleonic years: a nation ruined by incompetence and greed, a defeated nation with little hope.
Géricault’s Raft
Théodore Géricault, a promising young painter at the time, decided that the incident was going to be the subject of his most ambitious painting. He had read the testimony of two of the survivors and was as outraged by the tale of callousness and incompetence as much of French society was at the time.
He had for the most part taught himself in the Louvre, where he copied the works of renaissance and baroque masters, and the stables of Versailles, where he studied the anatomy of horses. This mostly self-led education enabled Géricault to make a name for himself as a painter of equestrian scenes.
Géricault had a minor reputation in 1818 when he began the work. He had exhibited successfully at the Paris Salon in 1812 but less successfully in 1814. The disappointment he had experienced as an exhibitor at the 1814 Salon led him to briefly join the army.
The ‘Paris Salon’ was the official exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, open to artists from all over the world. In other words, the Paris Salon was 19th century art’s equivalent to what the Fifa World Cup is to soccer now.
It was the most prestigious regular showcase of contemporary art at the time, a ticketed event that the well-heeled public flocked to and one that generated a huge amount of debate on matters from history and taste to politics and censorship.
In the minds of many artists, a critical triumph at the Salon was a triumph in the eyes of the entire art world.
Upon his return to painting, Géricault made painstaking plans to immortalise the shipwreck in vivid detail for the 1819 Salon. He interviewed survivors, visited morgues to make studies and took body parts back to his apartment – including a severed head from a lunatic asylum, of which he made several famous studies in preparation for his painting.
A scale model of the raft was constructed in Géricault’s studio with the help of three survivors, one of whom was a carpenter on the ship. The moment the artist chose to depict was the moment that the Argus, another ship in the flotilla to Senegal, suddenly appeared on the horizon. The last remaining survivors attempted to signal the ship but it passed by. Of this moment one of the survivors wrote:
‘From the delirium of joy, we fell into profound despondency and grief.’
As it happens, the Argus did return and eventually rescued the last remaining survivors.
The Painting was finished in 1819, when Géricault was only 27 years old and exhibited at the Paris Salon with the title “The Scene of a Shipwreck”. It was a generic title but nobody was left under the illusion that this was a scene of anything but the raft of the Medusa. The painting even depicts Henri Savigny, the ship’s surgeon (standing by the sail in the painting), who wrote the testimony that scandalised France. He had posed on the reconstructed raft in Géricault’s studio.
It was a monumental painting, enormous in fact. About 5 by 7 meters — 16 by 23 feet — with over-life sized figures in the foreground of the scene. It’s almost like standing in front of a cinema screen.
The stage, so to speak, was set. The painting gained the immediate notoriety that the painter had been hoping for. It was seen as an indictment of a corrupt regime and caused an enormous stir at the often crowded salon. Many were fiercely critical of the painting gratuitous morbidity and modern style, but republicans were supportive. The historian Jules Michelet said of the painting: “our whole society is aboard the raft of Medusa.”
The gory details
What made the painting effective was not the subject matter alone. Géricault meticulously planned the execution of the painting to have a number of dramatic effects on its audience.
For example, the raft is tipped up a little by a wave to give the painting an immersive power. Right in the bottom centre of the canvas is the corner of the raft, and it gives you the feeling that you could step onto it. This staging, and the sheer scale of the paining, intended to impress on the crowded room of the salon and it certainly does that to this day.
The composition is arranged into two pyramids made up of figures, one closer and one further from you the viewer. There is a pronounced diagonal across the painting, from the bodies of the dead and the despondent mourners across the bottom and to the left to the standing men on the upper right of the picture who have sighted the Argus and are waving frantically.
The colours are murky and dark, mostly browns. The sea is depicted in deep greens. The lighter tones are of pallid flesh and the pale light of dawn on the horizon. Géricault makes use of a style called “tenebrism” where dark tones and shadows are dominant but with dramatically contrasting effects of light. The effect of tenebrism has its origins in the Italian master Caravaggio, who revolutionised painting in the 17th century with his often shocking realistic portrayal of biblical scenes.
It is known that Géricault had traveled to Rome in the years before he painted the Raft of the Medusa and would have seen many of Caravaggio’s paintings in the grand baroque churches where they are confined. Géricault clearly borrows Caravaggio’s particularly dramatic use of light.
The weather is stormy and a large threatening wave is rolling towards the raft from the behind, this is all despite the fact that on the morning that the Argus was sighted, the weather was clear and calm. Géricault is being manipulative, he’s constructing a staging that guides our emotional response.
It’s not just the depiction of the weather that is misleading, Géricault drew on art history to aid his emotional construction. The figures of the living and some of the dying are muscular -even idealised- and evocative of the heroic figures of classical painting and sculpture, not of the starving.
The painting has one foot within the tradition of Neoclassicism, the style of art that flourished in France in the aftermath of the revolution. Neoclassicism was pretty much the opposite style from the preceding Rococo, which was a florid, often frivolous and complex style favoured by the French aristocracy.
Neoclassicism took its inspiration from the art of ancient Rome and Athens, those other great democratic republics. It was serious, austere and heroic, often resembling the statuary and friezes of ancient Rome. Géricault was immersed in the neoclassical style, it was practically the official style of the French state at the time.
It was also the style in which so called “history paintings” were produced, that is, paintings that depict historical scenes with a moral to impart. History painting was the eminent genre of painting at the time, the kind of painting that would carry moral and philosophical weight as well as technical sophistication.
Towards the bottom left is a father mourning his son, two figures inspired by Roman sculpture (of Patroclus held by Menelaus). Géricault used the common effects of this style to impart “seriousness” to his message.
The painting also takes inspiration from a style that was emerging at the time: Romanticism.
Romanticism was a style that evoked the sublime power of nature, the smallness of mankind, it was emotional and hysterically dramatic, a reaction to the rationalisation of nature through the enlightenment and the industrial revolution. Géricault admired the Baroque master Rubens, a whose opulent and highly stylised paintings served as a template for the romantic movement.
And so the Raft of the Medusa is a synthesis of the two styles. It is perhaps the first painting to truly import the romantic style into the French artistic scene. It does so by using the neoclassical history painting template to depict a contemporary scene of man’s confrontation with nature. Infact, one of the sailors depicted in the centre foreground of the painting, with his head bowed down to the viewer is Géricault’s young friend Eugene Delacroix, who became one of the most celebrated romantic painters.
Under the makeshift mast at the centre of the composition and forming the apex of the nearest compositional pyramid are from-life depictions of the men who brought the story back to France.
We have, then, this weird juxtaposition of contemporary and timeless, classically rendered, characters in the painting. It’s as if the Neoclassical format of the painting was a Trojan horse of sorts, a way of sneaking the scandal of the contemporary world into the art gallery by meeting its standards of style and seriousness.
The further compositional pyramid is the most extraordinary part. On the far-off horizon we see the Argus, and a group of figures are using a barrel to signal to the distant ship. At the apex of this group of figures is an african man, taking the lead in signalling to a ship with his shirt in his hand.
The decisive role of black men in the picture, and the placement of a black man at the very top of the composition, would have been shocking in France at the time. It’s highly likely that Géricault had abolitionist sympathies this was perhaps his way of making it known through his art, in an oblique yet pointed way.
The picture was both commended and condemned: it won a medal at the Salon but no buyer came forward for the controversial work. When the exhibition ended, Géricault cut the canvas from its frame, rolled the painting up, and unceremoniously sent it to be stored at a friend’s home. He lamented over the painting, saying: “It’s not worth looking at. I shall do better.”
Gericault went on to paint portraits of the most marginalised people in French society: the mentally and physically sick, the poor and the criminal. The Raft of Medusa was still left unsold but went on a tour of sorts to England where shocked revellers gawped at its naked and dying bodies. A replica was painted and shipped to the United States for the same reason: an appetite for the morbid details of France’s worst naval catastrophe. Even theatre productions of the incident took inspiration from the painting. For the subsequent years after its debut, the painting continued to be a controversial embarrassment to France’s royalist establishment.
In January 1824 Géricault died at the age of 32. In September of the same year King Louis XVIII died. It was only in this new political climate that the Louvre made the decision to acquire the work for its collection where it still hangs prominently as a testament to the intrinsic power of art to change the world, even if only a little; the power of art to speak to power.
The writing was on the wall for the Bourbon monarchy in France, Louis’s replacement, the unpopular Charles X, was overthrown in the second revolution of 1830 and replaced by a constitutional monarchy more acceptable to the lower and middle classes of France. In 1848, during a wave of unrest that swept across Europe, France once again became a republic.
Fin.
Ann Treboux
What is Renaissance Architecture Symmetric Style?
It had an emphasis on symmetry.
Symmetry is economy.
Symmetry is simplicity.
“The architecture of our brains was born from the same trial and error, the same energy principles, the same pure mathematics that happen in flowers and jellyfish and Higgs particles.” — Alan Lightman.
This style has an emphasis on symmetry, proportion, geometry, and the regularity of parts, as demonstrated in the architecture of classical antiquity.
Renaissance architecture is the European architecture of the period between the early 14th and early 16th centuries in different regions.
Renaissance architecture followed Gothic architecture and was succeeded by Baroque architecture.
Developed first in Florence, with Filippo Brunelleschi as one of its innovators, the Renaissance style quickly spread to other Italian cities.
Filippo Brunelleschi.
Italian, also known as Pippo 1377–15 April 1446 is considered to be the founding of Renaissance architecture.
He was an Italian architect, designer, and sculptor, and is the first modern engineer, planner, and sole construction supervisor.
The style was used in Spain, France, Germany, England, Russia, and other parts of Europe at different dates and with varying degrees of impact.
Renaissance style places emphasis on symmetry…
It was demonstrated in the architecture of classical antiquity and in particular ancient Roman architecture.
Systematic display of columns, pilasters, and lintels, as well as the use of semicircular arches, hemispherical domes…
Plan of Bramante’s Tempietto in Montorio.
Raphael’s unused plan for St. Peter’s Basilica.
Brunelleschi’s plan of Santo Spirito.
Michelangelo’s plan for Saint Peter’s Basilica, Rome (1546), superimposed on the earlier plan by Bramante.
“But why are we attracted to symmetry?
Why do we human beings delight in seeing perfectly round planets through the lens of a telescope and six-sided snowflakes on a cold winter day?
The answer must be partly psychological.
I would claim that symmetry represents order, and we crave order in this strange universe we find ourselves in.
The search for symmetry, and the emotional pleasure we derive when we find it, must help us make sense of the seasons and the reliability of friendships.
Symmetry is also economy.
Symmetry is simplicity.”
― Alan Lightman
The emphasis on symmetry is very much noted on all construction from that time.
Palazzo Medici Riccardi by Michelozzo. Florence, 1444.
Symmetry is also economy.
Symmetry is simplicity.
Symmetry is repetition.
Marcus Aurelius: The. Jew From Above
Getting Some Perspective from the Stars
Our own sense of self-importance is our undoing.
We often feel as if it is our importance that brings our possessions and relationships into an orbit around us. Being “self-centred” isn’t necessarily about being selfish, it can be about feeling self-worth from the things and people around you.
As much as we marvel at them, we also fear losing them. TVs, phones, cars, homes, partners, friends, pets and jewellery help us validate ourselves, but are at the mercy of fate.
Marcus Aurelius became the most powerful man on the planet when his co-emperor, Lucius Verus died in 169 AD. Everything in the Roman world came into his orbit. Armies, cities, ports, palaces, vast estates.
Many would get drunk on that kind of power. The emperors Caligula, Nero, and Domitian before him met early deaths for their mania for more.
But Marcus counselled himself in his writings that all that surrounded him was little more than a wisp of smoke in the grand scheme of the universe.
The Stoic emperor was challenged in many ways. From the rivals in his own court, to the encroachments of Rome’s enemies at its borders, there were innumerable reasons for Marcus to feel inner turmoil. He found freedom from worries not in his possessions but in his own mind.
One of the exercises the philosopher-king used to gain a perspective on things was to take an elevated and distant view of the world, as if from among the stars. The idea occurs again and again in his journals, published after his death as The Meditations.
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This is all put to the purpose of achieving what the ancient Greeks called apatheia, a tranquil state of mind unperturbed by the distractions of life around us.
To imagine the world around us from high above is to see how inconsequential the things around us are. This kind of “distancing” is a common technique in modern Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to quell over-thinking.
Thanks to technology, we now have a better idea of how big the universe is. The distances we now perceive are unimaginably vast. Our galaxy is among a huge cloud of millions of galaxies, each containing billions of stars like our sun. There are trillions and trillions of planets like our Earth in this vast cloud of galaxies.
It’s a cliche to be told that in the grand scheme of things you are insignificant. The earth is a molecule in a vast galaxy, itself a mere mote of dust in an inconceivably huge universe.
But the Stoics believed that we are part of the divine oneness of God. The universe is God and all things within it are part of God — part of the order of the cosmos. Of course the universe is massive, they would say. God is perfect, therefore the cosmos is infinite. The breath of life (pneuma) that makes up each human soul is itself a fragment of God’s soul.
For the Stoics the view from above was an exercise of spiritual contemplation as well as a meditation to find calm in the storm of life around them. This meditation allowed them to understand what is significant and what is not significant.
Marcus wrote in his journal: “It is high time now for you to understand the universe of which you are a part, and the governor of that universe of which you constitute an emanation.”
When we contemplate from the stars, we can realise that our material desires and insecurities are insignificant not because of the sheer size of the universe, but because we ourselves are part of that vast glittering whole. We are significant insomuch that we are part of the unity of the whole, the whole does not exist for our benefit.
Scipio’s Dream
Marcus wasn’t the first Roman philosopher to contemplate from the view from above. In the famous sixth chapter of his Republic, Cicero writes of a fictitious dream of the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus. The dream allows Cicero to expound a Roman conception of the universe and how it relates to Stoic virtues.
In Scipio’s dream, he is taken by his deceased grandfather, Scipio Africanus, a hero of the Second Punic War, up into a “shining circle” that the Greeks christened as the Milky Way.
Everything appears beautiful from this perspective, which Africanus explains is reserved for the deceased that have lived virtuously.
Scipio was taken aback at seeing the Earth,
“[W]hich at that distance appeared so exceedingly small, that I could not but be sensibly affected on seeing our whole empire no larger than if we touched the earth with a point.”
The account continues,
“as long as I continued to observe the earth with great attention, ‘How long, I pray you,’ said Africanus, ‘will your mind be fixed on that object; why don’t you rather take a view of the magnificent temples among which you have arrived?’”
The entire Roman Empire was just a tiny “point” on the Earth, itself a tiny point: a floating speck in the grand temple of the universe. What matters is not your daily life on Earth, replete with its yearnings for wealth, sex and fame, Cicero’s Africanus is saying, but your place in the universe. This is the basis of thinking and acting virtuously.
Marcus wrote:
“Observe the movement of the stars as if you were running their courses with them, and let your mind constantly dwell on the changes of the elements into each other. Such imaginings will wash away the filth of life on the ground […] View earthly things as if looking down on them from a high point above.”
Amidst this “filth” is dirty politics and competition for fame and fortune. The craving for fame and wealth in the circus of Roman politics would have been immense. Marcus was likely surrounded by sycophants and rivals hoping to make their reputation or fortune in the Empire.
The view from above would have grounded Marcus and everything around him in the realisation that fame is nothing. He wrote:
“Consider too the lives once lived by others long before you, the lives that will be lived after you, the lives lived now among foreign tribes; and how many have never even heard your name, how many will soon forget it, how many praise you but quickly turn to blame. Reflect that neither memory nor fame, nor anything else at all, has any importance worth thinking of.”
Anicius Boethius, a Roman magistrate and philosopher, echoed this sentiment in The Consolation of Philosophy, a text he wrote while waiting to be executed in 524 AD. Fame is “puny and insubstantial”, he wrote, when you realise that the earth “may be thought of as having no extent at all” when compared with the heavens.
If that doesn’t sound small enough, only a small amount of the surface of the earth is inhabited. The civilised world is “the tiny point within a point… in which you think of spreading your fame and extending your renown, as if a glory constricted within such tight and narrow confines could have any breadth or splendour.”
In the heavens, we can see constancy and real beauty. The celestial spheres burn with splendour. In the heavens above we see a pure order of nature.
Marcus wrote:
“The Pythagoreans say, ‘Look at the sky at dawn’ — to remind ourselves of the constancy of those heavenly bodies, their perpetual round of their own duty, their order, their purity, and their nakedness. No star wears a veil.”
Some of us find meaning in our careers, some in devotion to their football team. We devote ourselves to our public image, we veil ourselves with conceits. But devotion to things out of our ultimate control put your emotions — and even your sanity — at the mercy of their fortunes.
Instead, see the meaning in the constancy of the heavens. The rhythms of the earth are a faint echo of the vast cycles of the universe. The ancient astronomers observed a precision in the celestial motions and so it’s no surprise that these motions inspired thoughts of constancy and order within.
The Stoics believed that virtue lies in living in accordance with nature. Human orientation (oikeiôsis) is to reason. Cicero observed that the best among us transfer the order and beauty of the universe to ensure that they are preserved in our actions.
Whatever you believe, you have an undeniable part to play in the universe. The significance of your longings and cravings is no match for the turning kaleidoscope of which you are a part. Invest your passions into being part of the whole, and when you feel you’re at the mercy of fate, rise above it all.
Thank you for reading. I hope you learned something new.
Ann Treboux
ANN TREBOUX CREATIVE DESIGNER/PAINTER 