Deep

[poliphilo]

I was a bit hard on Grunewald. And the Church. So I thought maybe I'd make amends by posting a picture of the Crucifixion that I like.

Ummmm.....

Perhaps the truth is I don't like any pictures of the Crucifixion.

They're all trying to manipulate me. 

Besides, naked blokes with beards don't do it for me.....

And then I thought of this one.

Masaccio.  

The Jesus is the least thing about it. 

The people you remember are God the Father and Mary the Mother- figures of immemorial dignity. 

This isn't the picture of a guy being tortured to death. It's the picture of a Mystery.

Masaccio was the first painter to master the third dimension. And it's not just about trompe l'oeil.  

It's about creating a doorway, a gateway, a portal .




 

Comments

[solar-diablo.livejournal.com]

Orthodox iconography tends to do that - focus more on the mystery of the crucifixion than its agony. Come to think of it, the crucifixion is a rather uncommon subject for Orthodox artists to depict.

Maybe it's a sharper qualification to say your beef isn't with depictions of the crucifixion so much as the way Catholics (and some Protestants) use it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think the Orthodox show good taste in keeping off the crucifixion.

Yes, it's the guilt thing that annoys me most- the being put under an obligation to Jesus because he died so horribly for our sins. Did he indeed? I can't say I remember asking him to....

[oakmouse]

Nice judgment call. I must say I agree!

(Incidentally, out of curiosity --- what do you think of the jigoku zoshi, the Japanese Buddhist "hell scrolls"?)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Love the pictures, hate the theology behind them.

I'm up for any sort of visual weirdness. And if it's Japanese- so much the better.

[oakmouse]

*g* Again, agreed. I do like one thing about the Buddhist concept of hell, though. If one must believe in hell, at least one can believe in hell as a temporary process with a definite end. It tickled me no end, as a former Catholic (this was before I became a pagan), to learn that one gets OUT of Buddhist hells. They're not eternal. Even Avici Hell has an end. Admittedly that one goes on for a very long time, but still it's not permanent. I loved that little plot twist.

I do enjoy the demons in the jigoku zoshi; they're so outrageously campy. Almost as much fun as Hokusai's manga.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I tried to write a poem once about the Buddhist hells. It began- as I thought- promisingly enough but I could never find an ending for it.

I was going to "treat" you to the promising opening, but I find I've forgotten most of it.

[oakmouse]

Pity --- I like your poetry.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

This was a poem I kept going back to for years. Eventually I abandoned it. There may be a hard copy floating around somewhere but I doubt it.

[sovay]

Masaccio was the first painter to master the third dimension. And it's not just about trompe l'oeil.  

I discovered Masaccio through Mary Gentle's Ilario: The Lion's Eye (2006), in which he appears as a minor character and, not unlike Swinburne in Elizabeth Hand's Mortal Love (2004), steals all his scenes.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I walked into a church in a rough-seeming district of Florence and there was his cycle on the life of St. Peter. I hadn't been expecting there to be anything special in there and it just blew me away.