I studied a series of these woodcuts by Holbein the Younger for a piece of coursework I did concerning danse macabre (dance of death) and the role it played in 'ars moriendi' (the art of dying), which was a 14th century cultural phenoma caused essentially by the devastation of the plague coupled with the fear of dying badly and suffering from torment in purgatory, or worse, hell.
Not analysising I promise: This one really amuses me because the abbot (the dude that is not a skeleton) is supposed to be holy man, and clerics were supposedly the models of religious example in the community and demonstrating the best way to die, is stubbornly refusing to go with death and is about to lob his bible at the comical skeletal figure of death. I guess death just isnt having any of it...
3 comments:
I suppose the dude who is not the skeleton, is just as sinful as the rest of us - and when you think that a former Catholic Archbishop of Ireland had two children by his housekeeper, then men of the church were as liable to be dragged off to hell as the rest of us.
The Botticelli Primavera is complicated. It has all sorts of obscure anticque references that you need a PhD to figure out.
Breughel is no sentimentalist, is he? I love his pictures-everything in the detail, but the whole counts too.
Good postings.
heehee yep, clerics are very prone to a slight wandering of the path of grace! It just really amused me!
Yes the primavera is complicated- had it shown at school once I think and they were trying to explain it- I said to myself- i don't care it's 'pretty'- I just liked it and thats when I came to the conclusion you don't always have to understand things to appreciate them- sometimes when you find out that the artist was an arrogant git, or that the art symbolises something more sinister than you imagined it etc etc, it can ruin it for people, well at least me. (sometimes though I do appreciate that understanding it enhances the viewing pleasure etc etc, but how do you know until you researched??)In this case, as the proverb says, "Ignorance is bliss".
As for Breughel, heehee, no he is not a sentimentalist.
Glad you enjoyed the postings of an ignorant, but appreciative fan of art :D
"the dude that is not a skeleton"
^ that comment made me laugh a whole lot. excellent :)
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