Thank you for this piece and I agree with your larger theme. How fascinating to hear directly from any historical figures in the midst of trying to navigate life and what a gift to us that so much history is left to us in 1st and 2nd hand accounts. I agree future historians, or curious amateurs (like myself) would be impoverished by the paucity and perhaps also the lack of quality in diaries, journals and letters.
These pictures are fascinating, striking at first glance and filled with detail that merits looking closely, and more closely. The obituary is so odd. Was the writer of the obituary trying to curry favor, or get himself out of trouble, by writing such a weirdly damning piece? The image of Francis with the birds, and the mourning women are filled with great feeling, it seems to me, although I admit they are lacking in that saccharine rolling one’s eyes to the heavens image of piety that other religious paintings of the period are often filled with. Is that what the author of the obituary is complaining about, I wonder?
I agree with all you say. I can only point to a line from Ernst Jünger's book Auf den Marmorklippen: "Tief ist der Haß, der in den niederen Herzen dem Schönen gegenüber brennt", or roughly in English, "A deep hatred burns in the hearts of base people when they are in the presence of beauty."
Thank you for this piece and I agree with your larger theme. How fascinating to hear directly from any historical figures in the midst of trying to navigate life and what a gift to us that so much history is left to us in 1st and 2nd hand accounts. I agree future historians, or curious amateurs (like myself) would be impoverished by the paucity and perhaps also the lack of quality in diaries, journals and letters.
These pictures are fascinating, striking at first glance and filled with detail that merits looking closely, and more closely. The obituary is so odd. Was the writer of the obituary trying to curry favor, or get himself out of trouble, by writing such a weirdly damning piece? The image of Francis with the birds, and the mourning women are filled with great feeling, it seems to me, although I admit they are lacking in that saccharine rolling one’s eyes to the heavens image of piety that other religious paintings of the period are often filled with. Is that what the author of the obituary is complaining about, I wonder?
I agree with all you say. I can only point to a line from Ernst Jünger's book Auf den Marmorklippen: "Tief ist der Haß, der in den niederen Herzen dem Schönen gegenüber brennt", or roughly in English, "A deep hatred burns in the hearts of base people when they are in the presence of beauty."