On Catholic Imagination, Part 2: Art, Theology, and Imagination

Episode Topic: Art, Theology, and Imagination

Explore the dynamic imagination of Christian artists who transformed pagan gods into powerful symbols of their new faith. From the early Church’s reinterpretation of Hercules to the Renaissance genius of Michelangelo, discover how classical art was not rejected, but creatively absorbed and given profound new theological meaning.

Featured Speakers:

• Gary Anderson, Hesburgh Professor Emeritus of Catholic Thought, Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame
• Robin Jensen, Professor Emeritus, Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame
• Elizabeth Lev, Professor, Duquesne University 

Read this episode's recap over on the University of Notre Dame's open online learning community platform, ThinkND: https://go.nd.edu/a58701.

This podcast is a part of the ThinkND Series titled On Catholic Imagination.

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Transcript

Introduction of Speakers

1 0:10

It's my pleasure to, uh, introduce our two speakers this morning, afternoon, I should say. Robin Jensen from the University of Notre Dame, a person I've had the pleasure of knowing since the mid nineties when we were, scholars together in the Boston area. Used to meet her. I think I met her at a Patristic seminar that used to be held in what was known as the Red Pipe Room of Western Jesuit Seminary, which no longer exists, but I have good memories from those days. And our second speaker will be, Elizabeth Love, who I had the great pleasure of meeting for the first time, uh, when I accompanied my son, who was a Notre Dame undergraduate, to Rome during Holy Week. And she gave all the Notre Dame undergraduates a tour of St. Peter's in the Vatican Museum, which was just an extraordinary experience. Uh, one I'll never forget. those are my own personal words, but, uh, more formal introductions now to follow. Robin Jensen is the Patrick obrien professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, where research and publication focuses on the relationship between early Christian art and literature and examines the ways that visual images and architectural spaces should be regarded as modes of theological expression. Her published essays and books contend that in addition to interpreting sacred texts, visual images enhance liturgical settings, reflecting the nature and content of devotional piety and ex exculpate religious practices. Additionally, she is researched the practices, distinctive character and material evidence of Christianity in ancient Roman North Africa. Recurrent project tentatively titled, uh, from Idols to I, icons examines the emergence of a Christian material piety in the fourth and fifth centuries. This work discusses the perceived danger of visual representation of divine beings, early controversies over the miraculous power of saints, shrines and relics, the sacralization of structures and geographical places, and the belief that images may facilitate the presence of holy persons, uh, in their absence. Please join me in welcoming Professor Jensen.

Speaker 2 2:43

This is supposed to wear now. I can't get it. That's it. Hang on. A. We got someone here to help, I think. Yeah. I'm sorry, I didn't know what I did. Thank you for being here. You're welcome. There we go. Okay, great.

Speaker 3 3:19

So Li, Liz and I have decided to each do about a 20 minute, 25 minute quick presentation and then we'll sort of mix it up and take some questions. I think probably gonna it So art historians have attempted in various ways to explain the presence and the persistence, or perhaps the return of the traditional Greco-Roman gods and mythological themes on luxury art objects, especially silver and ivory, dated to the late fourth

Speaker 2 3:49

and early fifth centuries. This is the Corbridge

The Projector Casket and Mixed Religious Identities

Speaker 3 3:56

lax. It comes from a hoard of late fourth and early fifth century silver filter treasures found near Hadrian's Wall, and now in the British Museum it shows Apollo standing nude at the entrance to a shrine, his liar, and at his feet and a bow in his left hand. On the left are the goddesses, Artemis and Athena with an altar between them. The two female figures in the center have not been conclusively identified, but in the lower section is an overturned water jug. Artemis is hound, a fallen stag, another altar, and a griffin. This lax has been linked with the workshop and Ephesus, and may be associated with a shrine of Apollo at Delos. The site of the Pagan Emperor Julian's visit in 360 3. This is another example. This is the Milden Hall dish or plate. From another English horrid found in Suffolk. It includes this dish in which is 24 inches in diameter, so really large with a in the central head of Oceania, surrounded by four myriads riding on two Tritons, a sea stag and a hippocampus. A scallop she border separates the center from the broadband, which shows a Dyc Thea sauce or a procession with D. The God SIUs pan. A drunken. A drunken. Oh, thank you. The better. Did you hear? Okay. A drunken and a group of lusty nudes, nude males chasing after ecstatically dancing, mean adss. Some historians have argued. That these kinds of objects demonstrate the persistence of paganism into and pass the time when Christianity was not only on the rise, but quickly becoming the only officiate officially tolerated religion of the Roman Empire. But is there another explanation in the face of the growing social dominance and political power of Christianity with its own characteristic iconography and contemporary and increasingly hostile imperial legislation against existing pagan shrines, alters, and images? One might suppose that at the very least, depictions of pagan gods on objects that were owned or used by Christians themselves would've been at least disapproved, if not outwardly condemned by religious authorities. Yet some surviving artifacts show that at least some Christians were unfazed by combinations that block that blended motifs from the old religion with symbols and subjects from the new one. So here we are in the Altina or the Dina Ka catacomb in Rome. The juxtaposition of Christian figures, Noah and Noah's Moses and Daniel with pagan deities or heroes like Hercules ATUs and series is an A occur is an enjoining cupula in his fourth century Roman catacomb Abdi camp, sometimes known as via Latina. It's specifically interesting. Here are depictions that of the nude Hercules successfully de defeating the hydra and stealing the golden apples of has varieties and Hercules delivering al casters. From Hades and giving her back to her husband ATUs. These images surround other more identifiably Christian subjects, the Israelites crossing the Red Sea and arriving in the Promised Land, and Jesus raising Lazarus from the den. Another such blended type is the projector casket. It comes also from an ancient Roman silver hoard, but this one found on Rome's Escal and Hill around the 18th century, mid 18th century, and is now also in the British Museum, and it dates from 360 to three 80. The front of this casket's lid depicts a naked Venus seated on the half shell being offered a mirror and items for her toilet by C cent Taurus and, and winged ties, a little armini,

Speaker 2 8:30

the lids. Whoops. Too fast. Oh, I think I lost this one. There we're, the

Speaker 3 8:38

Lids Center depicts a wealthy Roman couple, probably a marriage portrait with an, uh, an inscription that runs around the rim and it reads, uh, und viva viti Christus, or und and projective. May you live in Christ, likely a wedding Present to projector. The object's juxtaposition of the goddess of love with the pious exhortation seems innocent perhaps to us, but also suggests that this particular pagan goddess had not been banished from the boudoir. These and many other examples, often in precious silver and ivory, but also paintings, mosaics, relief, sculpture, and small statues, I would say can be gr It can be ca categorized in three ways. First. Those that show adjacent or juxtaposed, but possibly intentionally discrete Pagan and Christian subjects like those in the Via Latina or Camp Catacomb. Secondly, those that show almost purely pagan gods or themes like the Corbridge lungs are the Milden hall plate. And three, those that have some Christian elements, but within an otherwise pagan mythological program like the projector casket. A fourth category has less to do with content or subject matter than with style. And this is the use of a izing style artistic style, often associated with the of Emperor Theosis, the first in the three eighties and three nineties, and characterized by high reliefs, polished carve carving, elegant drapery, idealized bodies, and naturalistic forms and poses. Now, lemme see I can get this right. For example, these two ivory panels from Florence are the well-known silver presentation plate. You can sort of see these lovely, particularly this lovely naked atom up here. he's quite beautiful and that kind of fits this sort of style that I'm talking about. And this one, this is the Maor or silver presentation plate of the Emperor Theodosius. And in it is the reclining image of the goddess of the earth. And that's why I opened this lecture this morning, this afternoon, the three small es, a little figures bringing, gifts to her. So a key question, if we assume that at least some of those who owned or commissioned these objects were Christians, what do we conclude about the authenticity of their religious identity? In other words, does the fact that an object shows a Pagan or God or mythological scene? The triumph of Dynas and a bunch of men chasing after mean ads necessarily suggests that the owner is still, in some sense, the practitioner of a pagan cult, a backsliding Christian perhaps, or just someone who wanted to show off their cultured wealth and taste. Unlike this appearances of classic mythological subjects in later artworks, and Liz will say more about this, these works were made at a time when pagan deities were still rivals to the Christian God. Notably, in the middle of the fourth century, the emperor Julian had attempted to restore Paganism as the official cult of the realm, and around that same time, there was the revolt of a man named Eugenius who made a similar effort in 3 94. So historians have offered three general explanations that might account for this first. That these objects, both in terms of their style and subject matter, are evidence of a resilient pagan cult and even reveal a concerted effort to restore the traditional Roman religion by still loyal last defenders of Paganism sometime in the three eighties or three nineties following Eugenicist Revolt. Among these is the famous art historian, ERNs Kittinger, who wrote in 1977, a book called Byzantine Art. In the Making the Non, at the remaining non-Christian minority, he says, fostered these forms and the values underlying them as part of their defense of the pagan religion and their old way of life. Kissinger also interestingly argues that in doing so, they inspired the Renaissance of the Classicism style I've just mentioned. So a nice gift to Christianity from the Pagans in his magisterial work, the Last Pagans of Rome. The Roman art historian Alan Cameron persuasively argued against Kittinger that these objects are not evidence of a pagan revival on several grounds, including the fact that many of these objects actually date well into the fifth century and would have been owned by Christians Cameron seasonal basis, or identifying these as examples of militant paganism. Instead, he describes them more as nostalgic mementos of an idealized past rather than a religiously motivated propaganda. So the second argument following from Cameron is that these pagan themes or motifs on these objects neither bore significant religious meaning, nor served any particular religious or political agenda. Instead, they were purely decorative or status objects that displayed the cultivated taste, social prestige, and the

Speaker 2 14:16

wealth of their owners. A statue of Venus on

Speaker 3 14:23

sale at Amazon might be an example today. Cameron Surmises that while these owners could well have been committed Christians, quote, it was evidently important to some members of the Christian elite. The Christianity should be made to look as classical as possible, and why not? If we have any hope of understanding the classic taste of the aristocracy of late antique Rome, we must first give up the idea that it has any connection to the religious beliefs. End quote. So that's his position. A third position, by contrast, other scholars see these objects as having religious meaning, but not as demonstrating any abiding allegiance to paganism per se. But rather as evidence of a mixed, plural or vacillating religious identity among half-hearted Christian convents converts who had not completely forsaken their former religious commitments following the work of scholars like Eric Ard at at Cornell. Such scholars question the idea that Christians had exclusive religious affiliations. They regard these objects as evidence that there, that they hear that Christian adherence to any cult, especially among the upper classes, must have still been in flux. Now, I think it's possible that families could have included in members who were head, who would've held this wavering allegiance, either to the past cult or the new one. Robert Coen has identified this phenomenon as an instance of cohabitating belief systems, which might explain the DIO Campan Catacomb program. As reflecting different religious affiliations of two or more deceased family members, perhaps Cosin also coined the term visual syncretism to describe this blending of Pagan and Christian themes or motifs, and suggests that individuals could well have maintained religious pluralism, as he says, as a quote, real, reasonable, real world practice. Moreover, given that some monuments are actually difficult to identify as clearly Christian or Pagan, it is reasonable to suppose that this might have been purposeful, that the imagery is intentionally ambiguous and could be easily regarded differently by different viewers. And here's a good example of that. There's nothing specifically Christian here, even the Good Shepherd is not, and this is actually in the Christian wing of the Vatican, sarcophagus collection. So to sum up. Historians have argued whether these objects serve as examples of a pagan religious revival, the continuation of a cultured visual vernacular, or as evidence of a religious confusion. I, on the other hand, would like to propose a fourth option, one that I believe fits this conference's focus on the Catholic imagination, and this is that the appropriation of pagan deities and heroes might indicate some degree or found ways to reinterpret and integrate the previous attachments of these people along with their associated images into their new belief system. This would allow respectably orthodox Christians to endow pagan types with their own characteristic religious significance while maintaining that familiar visual vocabulary. In my view. These figures then maintain both their original and adopted religious connotations. But these connotations can still be held as distinct rather than blended or confused. This is not visual syncretism. They just happen to exist side by side and are not intended to be integrated into any single program. Just as Christian types among Old Testament figures, they adapted types from a mythological religious characters just as it very practical thing to do. In so doing, they found a value in using existing motifs, not to preserve them as if they as they were, but to use them as bearers of new Christian meaning. Examples of this would include the Christian adoption of figures like Apollo or Saul

Speaker 2 18:58

as Christ types. Here's another example. Or Orpheus

Speaker 3 19:07

borrowed from pagan image imagery and transformed into Christian pictorial, context. This parallel is practice is this practice is paralleled in literature. Early Christian writers allowed that some pagan mythological figures possessed qualities or virtues that characterize the Christian savior God. For instance, Christian apologists in the second century acknowledged explicit parallels between Jesus' death and resurrection, as well as his miracles with those of Greco-Roman Gods like Asus and Orpheus and Hercules, and BCAs depictions of the sun. God Helios riding his chariot through the heavens was adapted to express the idea that Christ brings light into the world. Orpheus, the mystical singer and animal tamer was transformed into a type of Christ who could tame the wildest of animals, the human soul. It's been long established, moreover, that a Christian image of the good shepherd was adapted from the preexisting figure of a sheep bearing. Hermes. Similarly, the reclining posture of a new Jonah, and we have him over here on the left, is adapted from the the posture and depiction of the classical hero, Greek hero, and Damian on Roman sarcophagi, and he conveyed the belief that's there it is in Christianity's promised final resurrection as a bliss blissful state, initiated and granted through the ritualized death and rebirth through the sacrament of baptism. So the pagan images receive new meaning, but these meanings necessarily rely on their former or original religious meaning in order to work. This could include figures that were religiously neutral, but particularly handy for Christians to express themselves visually. River personifications, for example, that's actually the Jordan River here on the left, that God the Father. So just as we saw in the DIO camp catacomb, most of the, one of the most popular of ancient gods. Hercules makes his appearance rather strikingly among Christian images. And if we don't assume that the wall paintings reflect the choices of a mixed religious family or a confused Christian, can we propose that Hercules rescues El Al castes from the underworld? Apollo brings light into the world, and they both serve as Christ types affirming the Christian hope of eternal life beyond the grave. And this is paralleled, I think in Christian perception of Old Testament pickers. the sacrifice of Isaac here, here's Abraham, offering his son Isaac. And if you notice, we move right over to the scene of Pilate washing his hands and there is no Christ here. The Christ actually implied here is Isaac.

Speaker 2 22:07

Okay. Sam lost my place here. Hmm. Okay. One of the most long lived, maybe the Christian angel adapted from the iconography of the goddess victory. That's actually Nike or victory.

Speaker 3 22:29

So one might assume, and this is another great example of that, this is, this is, these are two victory figures and that's the Christian Angel. Same thing. One might even argue that the Christian adaption of pagan types not only integrated the past with the present visually asserted the superiority of the Christian religion by having absorbed and transcended the pagan pantheon. So in conclusion, this is not evidence of a waver commitments religious confusion or plural identities, but a case of iconographic appropriation that neutralizes rivals while rehabilitating them as a meaning making symbols. Thus, they possess continued vitality to an imaginative and effective infusion of new meaning into familiar and culturally esteemed pictorial motifs. Thank you.

1 23:34

Thank you very much for that. Very fun talk. Our next speaker will be Elizabeth Lev Duque University. Elizabeth Lev holds degrees in the history of art from the University of Chicago and the University of Bologna, and has been teaching art history at the University of Mary's Rome program since 2022. She also teaches at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas and Rome as well as St. Vincent's College. Lev is well, is a well-known Rome and Vatican tour guide and is lectured on the art of Rome all over the world. She writes regularly for numerous outlets such as First Things, soccer Dose Inside the Vatican Magazines, and her four books include The Tigris of Forley Roman Pilgrimage, A Body for Glory, and Her Latest, the Silent Night. A history of St. Joseph as depicted an arc Lev has presented a TED Talk on the quote, untold story of the Sistine Chapel. Has appeared on many television and radio interviews from ABC's Nightline to the Today Show. She was featured in the series, museum Secrets for the Histor History Television. Uh, and Brad Me's Decoded and was the host of Catholic Canvas, a 10 part television series on the Art of the Vatican Museums, which aired on EWTN. Please join me in welcoming, to the podium. Elizabeth left.

The Story of Venus in Renaissance Art

The Artistic Partnership of Macho and Masolino

Michelangelo's Transformation of Classical Models

The Rediscovery of the Laocoön

Speaker 5 25:10

Hi. So thank you so much for that, uh, introduction, which bought us enough time to get the IT situation under control. good. Thank you. And, uh, I am really, really grateful and thrilled to be here with Robin Jensen and I have to say that. A little bit daunted. I decided that I would counter, uh, her sublime with a little bit of ridiculous. So if my slideshow ever actually makes it, you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. I'm gonna be picking up from the Renaissance era, which is the era that I am practical with, and in particular, uh, in the Vatican Museums, which I spend a fair amount of time in. And therefore, what I wanted to talk about was the idea of, it's picking up this same idea of how this civilization of the 14th, 15th century looks at this art of antiquity. And how with this imagination manages to transform it again, it's fascinating. You've just seen this Christian civilization who's just managed to get the upper hand in the pagan world, wrestling with these wonderful stories and these beautiful deep-seated images in antiquity. And then after this long period of really almost this sort of lying fallow where we really don't see that much engagement with the, with the images of pagan mythology, we don't see much of the aesthetic of the world of the first second of the classical world. Suddenly we start to see this re-engagement happening in this period that we call the Renaissance. And at the end of the day, much of the discussion of the Renaissance that I wanna make here is that the Renaissance is not just this rebirth of, oh, wasn't it great when we were doing cool things like the Pagans did. But really the Renaissance is this Catholic imagination, re-imagining the beauty of this ancient world. I see. We did not buy enough time for the slides because I, I knew, I knew it eventually would have to happen. This is the problem when you, um, when you double up your presentations, you exponentially increased the risk of having a tech disaster. And since obviously yesterday everything went well. Naturally I am due some sort of comeuppance. So in the meantime, I am going to get started just by telling you a couple things that had pointless slides. Anyway, the first part is, I just was going to start with, um, a little kind of catchy was that we, if we were doing a movie, there'd be like the ripple as we fast forwarded in time and we get to the 13 hundreds and we're in Sienna and we find a story where the, the cna, this incredibly, you know, culturally, uh, rich area. We have writers, we have poets, we have a tremendous industry. It's a very sophisticated town. And in 1300, they decide to build this fountain called the Fontana Gaia. And they've found this ancient statue of Venus. They're so excited. They've discovered this beautiful work from antiquity, and they ooh, in awe about how beautiful it is. And they erect it on the Yes, it's here. And they erect it on the, um, on the Thank you. So you, you get double applause for this one. We're gonna, we're gonna make a little, we're gonna make a little monument with you, with a couple of victory angels. so the fact of the matter is, let's see, here we go. Who wore it better? For those of you who like Us Weekly Magazine. this Fontan, this Fontana Gaia becomes a, they're very proud of this beautiful pagan statue that they've placed at the top of the Fontana Gaan. We hear from Lorenzo Guberti himself, a very, very famous artist of the of the following century. He tells us that Sienna discovered another statue of Venus to the huge joy of the inhabitants with much feasting and honor. It was set up over the fountain called If FTE Gaia as an adornment, but great tribulations came upon the land there, arose one of the council and speak in this wise fellow citizens. Since the finding of this figure, we have had much evil hap. I advise that we remove this image from the public square, deface it, break it in pieces and send it to be buried as it just so happens they sent it to be buried in the territory of Florence to send all the mad mojo over to there. But the fact of the matter is that tells us a very interesting relationship. That this new, this end reentry of these images makes them, makes them very, very nervous. So we have this first kind of reappearance of a Venus who then gets, dis and she disappears. And this really does relate as we look around Europe at this, in the way that the human body, the way the humanity is depicted during the period that GK Chesterton refers to as the long purgation. So here I have two images for you. One is from, one is from Shahar and the other one is from the, uh, the, the chapel of the, the Palatine Chapel in Montreal. And these are two images in which we're looking at Adam and Eve. We're looking at two nude figures, and the bodies of these figures are sort of summarily sketched out. We see, again, it's not this, we don't see this fullness, this beauty, this ease with the human body. But even when Adam and Eve are committing that, I mean, granted, Eve does do a lot of sit-ups, which is lovely, but the, um, clearly there was a low carb diet in the Garden of Eden. But the, um, that, the fact of the matter is that, that, that, that, that sensuality, that enticing aspect of the body is missing. And there's a very interesting, uh, idea about why this might have happened. Why we have this long period where the human body, where these ancient sculptures, where, where the art and the aesthetics of the ancient world really do say nothing to the, to the uh, uh, intervening period. And so I'm gonna read you a little bit of GK Chesterton's, uh, biography of St. Francis of Assisi. That's called the chapter the World Francis Found. It says, he tells us. Now everybody knows, I imagine that in the 12th and 13th century, we're in awakening, awakening of the world. There were a fresh flowering of culture in the creative arts after a long spell of a much sterner and even more sterile experience, which we call the Dark Ages. He goes on to explain that the end of the dark ages was not merely the end of a sleep. It was certainly not merely the end of a superstitious enslavement. It was the end of something belonging to quite a definite, but quite a different order of ideas. It was the end of app penance, he says, or if it be preferred, a pga, a purgation. It marked the moment when a certain spiritual expiation had finally been worked out and certain spiritual diseases had finally been expelled from the system. They had been expelled by an an era of ASEs asceticism, which the only thing, which was the only thing that could have expelled them. So then he tells us about the Pagan civilization. Civilization. It had indeed been a high civilization. It would not weaken our thesis. It might even strengthen it to say that the highest and the was the highest humanity ever reached. It had discovered its still unrivaled arts of poetry and plastic representation. It had discovered its own political ideals. What was the matter with the heathen civilization is that there was nothing for the massive men in the way of mysticism, except that it concerned the mystery of the nameless force of nature, such as sex and growth and death in the Roman Empire. Also, long before the end, we find nature worship, inevitably producing things that are against nature. But the truth, I mean, is something much more subtle and universal than a conventional catalog of atrocities. What had happened to the human imagination as a whole was that the whole world was colored by a dangerous and rapidly deteriorating passions by natural passions becoming unnatural passions. The effect of treating sex as only one innocent, natural thing was that every innocent, natural thing became soaked and soden with sex. So you can argue with GK Chesterton about this, but what I'm telling you is that it is one way of understanding this kind of putting out of the arms on the part of art, the visual arts regarding the human body, the natural form of the human body, or even the idealized natural form of the human body. This is the moment where I think I do have to make the disclaimer is that you'll be seeing. A lot of naked human bodies now. So get ready. the, uh, my husband has to deal with the fact that I do look at this stuff all day long. so these are the three, the three works I would like to, I'd like to talk to you about. We're gonna look at three sculptures, that were representative of, three of these deities and their reception and transformation during the period of the Renaissance. The first one will be Venus, who we've already been introduced to. I didn't have the nice Amazon picture, I'm sorry. and then the, uh, second will be Apollo. The third will be the famous lay apple, one of the Vatican museums. And so we start with a Venus who is a particularly fascinating figure. You can see how enticing she is even in the fourth and the fifth century. How else are you going to express this marital love in the project pre Traject casket? Well, Venus, in the ancient world, when the Greeks first started to develop their imagery of Venus, they were kind of hampered by a funny little rule. The rule was that you were not supposed to show goddesses in the nude. We had this heroic nude for the male gods. If you're a God hero athlete, knock yourself out. That's why they only show God's heroes and athletes. But generally, the rule was even in our ve venous gentrix or in the stunning Lew throne, there is always some sort of covering on the female goddesses. Mythology really helped to reinforce that. If you remember, if any of you know your Greek mythology, the one case of the rather hapless acton who happens across the, uh, the goddess Diana at her bath, he gets turned into a deer and hunted down by his own dogs. And as she says in this great line, the metamorphosis, now you now try and tell people you saw me naked. So there's really a sort of a, definitely don't do this. And then in the Greek versions, this is a Greek vase, PA s Greek vase painting. We leave out the sort of cute part of the story and you just see Acton being devoured by his dogs. I think you could describe that as a deterrent. Then something remarkable happened in the island of an artist named Paxil in the fourth century bc sitting around in his studio, came up with an interesting way of hedging his bets. He made two statues of Venus, one clothed and one unclothed, and along came the representatives of the island of Kos, the wealthiest island in the aan. And they looked and they saw the nude statue and they said, no thank. You'll be taking the dress one. And the dress one went to Casa, was properly, promptly forgotten. The people from the island of Cantos, however, purchased the statue, the nude statue of Venus, and that nude statue became so famous. It was according to Pliny, the elder who left us a kind of Michelin guide to the ancient world for art history. He left us this description of this discovery of this, this purchase of the statue. It goes to the island. They build a round, a round island for the sculpture so that people can travel and, and ride around in a boat and look at her at all sides. I did not add the off color story that Pliny puts about someone who became excessively attached to the statue. If you wanna know about that, you have to go read your own Pliny. But the long and short of it is, it is a sculpture that becomes famous. We hear about the incredibly powerful kings who try to buy it. And so it is the great object. This, this goddess of love, beauty, and desire becomes the great object of desire in this period. So much so that there's even a kind of a cute version of the story where, uh, the, uh, on two occasions we have um, we have writers talking about. Venus herself, having seen Aphrodite herself, having seen the statue saying, you know, I know Paris and Smarts saw me naked, but when did Pili see me naked? So it's sort of very, very, very, very famous, famous work. So what if we got here? We have a really interesting conceit that Pxi is put together here. If you notice what's going on is that Venus is basically about to get in her bath. So anybody who knows their Diana story is like Uhoh, uhoh, uhoh, right? So she's about to get in the bath and she takes off her bathrobe and she puts it down, and as she takes a step forward towards the water, she hears you spying on her. You're seconds away from getting caught. And so she goes to cover herself, but she is the goddess of love, beauty, and desire. So she does a terrible job of covering herself. And in doing so, she becomes all the more attractive because of this taboo. And so this work, this story of this work, which Pliny's writings are rediscovered in the 15th century, they're translated into Italian at the end of the 15th century so that even artists can read them. Pliny becomes kind of the go-to when artists start thinking about, how can I make works more beautiful, more enticing? How can I get people's attention? But Venus is gonna have to a long way. She has a long way to go. I should tell you, first of all, she's the most successful sculpture to the point where there are so many copies of this work, of varying forms, of varying types. And we call the Venus Pika, the Venus Colon, Venus Barbini. Every self-respecting collection has its own copy of this Venus. Just to give you an idea. Of how diffused this image was throughout the ancient world and how accessible this image would become during the Renaissance world. But it'll have an interesting reentry because when we see Venus appearing again, it will be in a pulpit. And a pulpit done by a man named Giovanni Pizano, the son of the more famous Nicholas Pizano, who began this whole new reuse of ancient models, including Hercules in his own, uh, in his own sculpture, his son Giovanni. A little bit more rebellious, a little bit more edgy, a little bit more nervous. Made in 1300 a pulpit for the cathedral of the Cathedral of Epia, not the baptistry, a epia, the cathedral. And these very, very densely packed images up at the top, which tell the stories of salvation was kind of tension. But these stories, these, these stories from the gospels. Rest upon these pillars in which we have images of virtues underneath and surprise, surprise, who shows up as standing as one of the pillars of this work. Next to the image of fortitude, we have this image, which is occasionally, sometimes interpreted as prudence, sometimes interpreted as, as, as eve next to it. I just, because I knew you were talking about Hercules, I threw in the, I threw in the Hercules, that these two images, a male nude and a female nude derived one very obviously from, actually, they're both derived very obviously from classical models. The figures are in contr postal. They're in this position where you have the dis, the, the, the weight distributed between one leg and the other. So we see this interest in the way the body is put together, a sort of interest in the, in the, in the articulation of the human form in an aesthetic fashion. Granted, the face of prudence looks a little bit more upset about being seen naked than our usual venous figure, but there it's our return to nude figures taking place in this new renaissance rebirth era. But the figures notice how they are completely confined, captured, trapped, controlled as they are being, as they support this higher story, the story of salvation, the scripture stories that are above them. So we see it already very, this, this, this emergence of these classical figures are very controlled and contained within this larger nar nar, larger Christian narrative. Now she will reappear again our Venus in the hands of macho and masolino who have a very brilliant way of using these figures. When you look at Macho and Masolino, the two, two partner artists in Florence, in the very beginning of the 15th century, both probably Inconveniently named Thomas or Tomazo Thomasino, little Thomas was always the more elegant of the two painters. He was the one who always painted the things that were sweeter and more pleasant to look like, look at. Whereas Macho, awkward Ungainly Thomas, he would do the clunkier figures. He was friends with sculptors like, like Donatello. He was friends with Bruno Leski. He was a very sort of, very volume and space guy. The two of them worked together in this extremely fruitful partnership, which really he, it reached its apex when they worked on the Carmelite Church of, um, worked for the Carmelite Church in Florence in the Broche Chapel. And they chose on either side of the entrance of the chapel to paint the story of the temptation. IE Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and the expulsion, Adam and Eve, out of the Garden of Eden, Masolino, took the pair inside the garden. Macho took the pair outside the garden and look at the two figures of, of Eve. The figure of eve inside the garden is also a di derivative of our Venus of cantos, except without the covering of herself. But you can see in the way the body is articulated, this art, this, this elegant, beautifully knit, trim, athletic, proportionate body, which is a beauty derived from Greek studies. Then when macho takes over for the fall of man, he takes our Venus Pika, he takes our Venus covering herself. But instead of making her an enticing figure playing, oh, look at me, don't look at me. You see the en the, the, the, the changes that he makes in the sloping of the shoulder, the enlarging of the hips, the expression of the face, the sheer sh not only the shame, but the weight, the burden that the body becomes in the hands of macho. And so these two men able to play with this model in order to use the most familiar image of love, beauty, and desire to represent the moment pre-fall in which there is no shame. And the moment post-fall when the body becomes a burden to man Berti, who is the one who spoke about the, um, the Venus of Sienna. He later will ma in his own doors for the baptistry in Florence will also follow in the Masolino Mar Mar model. When you look at the image of the creation of woman over here in the site, I actually got another picture of her over here. You have this creation of woman where again, it has that same position, but this time, this arm opening to reveal the beauty of this body. As the years are going on, the, the, the artists are becoming more and more comfortable with the possibilities of this, this image of Venus to tell the story of Christianity, but also tell the story of salvation, but also to glorify the beauty of the body. And then we come to the man who I find perhaps the most interesting short of Michelangelo regarding ancient models, Botticelli. Who is probably, well probably not right now'cause I think the museum is closed at this point. But usually every day in that Ozi museum, you have everybody racing into that one room to ana over the Primavera and Palace in the sent tower and the birth of Venus and somehow comfort themselves with the idea that, oh, this Renaissance, it really doesn't require any kind of religious belief from me, the Renaissance. It was really about just finding these great old Pagan things like love and isn't it just so much better that way? But that's not who Botticelli is at all. Botticelli is a very, very interesting painter in that he will use the same subject matter and the same use subject matter of the mythology of the classical world. We will have, we will have Venuses and Mars and Palace, but when, when Botticelli imagines them. He transforms them entirely. He's never bound by the presence of this old story of the gods and goddesses. He feels very comfortable in reinterpreting these figures in his own life. This birth of Venus, which is very mysterious as a painting, produced probably 14 80 14 82, whether it's for Lorenzo Dier, Francesco De Medici, or which member of the Medici family, it remains a little bit mysterious. But what we do know about Botticelli is that he was very close and intimate in the circle of Lorenzo, the magnificent de Medici and his group that met in the garden by some Marco and one of the people when several of the people in that garden, Marcello Ficino Pico Dela, they were all very interested in the concept of earthly love and celestial love, earthly beauty, celestial. How can Earthly beauty draw our minds towards celestial beauty? And we have these early members of the Platonic Academy. They had Venus with two aspects. The earthly goddess who aroused humans to physical love and the heavenly goddess who inspired the intellectual love in them. But we have from the words of Lorenzo, the magnificent himself, or we have, sorry, the words from Lorenzo magnificent himself. And above all, love is the cause that leads men to worthy and excellent endeavors and leads them to practice and to turn into action, those virtues that are potentially in our soul. Therefore, whoever diligently seeks the true definition of love finds it to be nothing other than an appetite for beauty. I set aside for the moment that love, which according to Plato, is the means whereby all things find their perfection and ultimately rest in the supreme beauty. That is God. So we have this, this Botticelli is the image guy. He's the visual guy for a world that is looking at beauty and this, this, this, this love. Human beings have this mysterious birth, which human beings are the only creatures that react to beauty, that can be moved by beauty, that can be transformed by beauty. And when the Greeks ask themselves that question, where did it come from? Did it just rise to the top of the waves? Botticelli tried to illustrate that. So I'm gonna give us our good old Venus over here. And even though yes, ostensibly the two looks somewhat, they are clearly mod, one is modeled on the other that Botticelli Venus really does not look very much like our, she's the Capline Venus at all. As a matter of fact, first of all, you may have noticed by now that the Venus by Botticelli has a dislocated shoulder and, uh, her long, her arms, I think might be longer than her legs. So all these rules of proportion that the Greeks are holding up, they've just thrown these rules right out the window. The body is, cannot have any weight or mass because after all, she's standing on the edge of a shell. If she did actually have any weight or mass, the shell will come up and bean her in the back of the head. So I don't think this really is representing an actual person, even the way her body is laid out, the shadowing, it's a very, it's a figure that draws our eye upwards. So Botticelli brings forth this new vision of Venus, this impetus towards beauty. And he trans, he re redirects it so that we think about the, we think about this Venus as a guide to divine beauty. Now, it's true that every good movie deserves a sequel since we've been talking a lot about cinema this weekend. And uh, here is Venus 2.0, way of water, or whatever you wanna call her. The statue of Venus was so successful that obviously there was going to be a new version. And the new version is the Venus of Benia IE The Crouching Venus produced about 250 bc This Venus, the same idea. You can see the exact same conceit, but this is a Hellenistic work in which the body is more voluptuous, the body is softer. And of course, in the dynamic, the the istic requires more dynamism. In the figures we see her crouching, but still doing an equally bad job of covering herself. This particular work, again, inviting you to walk around on all sides. So very much this artist knew the story of the first Venus, this, this beautiful Venus. Again, hundreds of copies. She will end up in the strangest place of all as we get to the man whose Catholic imagination is the most extraordinary. When faced with an ancient sculpture, Michelangelo is gonna propose that Venus to you in the last place I think you'd ever expect to look. The image of the Virgin Mary next to Christ in the moment of the last judgment, this incredibly stern Jesus, this terra of Jesus that Michelangelo painted is countered by this extraordinarily enticing, beautiful, irresistible figure curled up right by the wound in his side. As a matter of fact, when we think of this Mary, this church, this bride to the bride room, to whom he cannot say no because she is more so beautiful and Michelangelo in his Catholic imagination in the room dedicated to the assumption of the virgin built by the man who put the immaculate conception on the on the universal calendar. Why is she so beautiful? She has no spot of sin in her. So again, this way that he transforms this image, so much so that I don't think anybody ever recognizes our good old Venus in the image. I never get that. Never gets old with me. Our second figure is Apollo. In which case, I'm gonna give you a very, very brief lesson in, classical art. So we're looking at the Apollo Belvedere, who was very famously rediscovered in 1489, in the gardens in Rome, and purchased by Cardinal Giuliano de Lare. We are looking at a, uh, statue of, uh, Egyptian statue to give us a sense of the Greek versus the Egyptians. Apollo is an excellent example of classical art, which is the moment when the Greeks finally figure out how to super, how to, how to supersede the Egyptians. The Egyptians make great sculptures. They last a really long time. They look like they've just had a bad FedEx trip, but the way they do it is by keeping the figure in the block so the arms and the legs are never separated. The Greeks, not only will they separate the arms and the legs, they're the ones that are gonna invent that iliac crest, which was so helpful for Chris Hemsworth. But at the end of the day, the Greeks, not only do they separate the arms and the legs, they take, they pay attention to the articulation of the body. They create a system of mathematical formulas, of a system of mathematical proportions for a human body. The Greeks find beauty in mathematics. The proportions that are imposed on Apollo make of an Apollo a work that is so beautiful, no human being can ever attain that beauty. Apollo's main message to us is, well, yeah, of course you can worship me, but you can't really be me. Right? And he does it by having no indication of tension in his body. This guy, he doesn't have to lay off carts. No interaction with your space. That's your space. That's his space. The twain do, not me, and of course those famous faces of the classical gods, which really seem to say, I'm a God and you are not. So what Michelangelo is going to do is he's going to be looking at this beauty. As a matter of fact, this is a very frustrating beauty. He's beautiful, but what are we gonna do with this? This is a work that means nothing to the Christian world, the Christian God. He stopped being ineffable and unknowable. He comes into the world, he is suffers, and he dies for humanity. How can this work ever speak to Christians? Well, Michel is the famous Reese discovery. Mike Raphael will be the one who actually first sees the possibilities. Well, he see. He makes this the the hallmark of Julius's pontificate. In the Parnassus, we have the Apollo followed by these two beautiful guides of the intellectual life with Plato and Aristotle, both in their contra posto, both moving forward, both similar to the Apollo in their position, but it will be Michelangelo, who is the one who figures out what to do with that body. He sees it in the garden of Julius ii and he turns it into the pie. If you look at the articulation of the body of Jesus, it is perfect. If you look at the proportions of the body of Jesus, they are perfect. It is the body of a Greek God. But then he did a few things that no, no, no Ari would've ever done. Look at the arm, bunched under the shoulder, the signs of death. He's observed a dead body. You are looking at the details of a lifeless man, whether it's that sleeping face, that shoulder with the fold of flesh falling over the fingers, or the hand dangling downward with the blood, with the blood pooled in the veins, which is left the veins all distended. It was Michelangelo who looked at an image of a Greek God and figured out how to take that Greek God and to fuse it with a dead man to make a Jesus. That would make us feel sorry for a God. So this very, very new way of imagining these figures. The same thing happens in David when he makes the image of the David. He's gonna come shortly after the Pieta. He's brought back to Florence. In Florence. He's expected to produce a David in the wake of the slim lovely Donatello David, the wiry powerful occhio David. And then he produces the immense David of the, of the Galleria that he produces for the Republic of Florence. The 1501 to 1504 David, by Michelangelo is already breaking the paradigm that the Florentine had produced by creating the small four foot creature that makes it very apparent that there is no way that David will ever be able to defeat Goliath, right? So it's very clear. As much as that little verrochio figure may fight and might, might struggle, there's no way that's happening. But what do you do when Michelangelo is carving a David that's out of a 17 foot tall block that weights six tons? Like, how big is Goliath? How are we possibly supposed to believe that this guy is gonna have trouble facing whatever Philistine he's gonna find in front of him? How is Michelangelo going to portray a vulnerability, a, a, an awkwardness, a need for God's help in a figure that looks like that? Well, it goes back to our friend Apollo, both represented in the heroic nude, both clearly, but again, David is clearly modeled on the Apollo. There is a very, very important change between the two works, and it's in the proportions. Those perfect proportions that you saw in the Apollo. They are not there in the David. The head is too big. The hands are too big, the chest is too, too skinny. The legs are too long. Everything is wrong. There's tension in the stomach. There's a furrow in the brow. David's a little worried. He's about five minutes out from the fight, and he's a little concerned, right? It looks like us. We're trying to get our tech together right before the talk. Michelangelo, again, fresh from using the Apollo to transform him into the Jesus of the pie talk. He then is able to take those proportions, alter them to give us the awkwardness of the adolescent David. David is no hero yet. He's not a grown man. He's a 15-year-old boy that just bit off more than he can chew. He needs God's help and the giant hand and the giant head and the giant feet. They tell us who he's going to grow into, but they also remind us that he's not there yet Again, the unique eye of Michelangelo in the history of art, and that brings me to my final work. The Lewan Lewan is the most famous ancient sculpture in the Vatican Museums. He is, uh, he's not in the guidebook. Don't buy the guidebook. We know quite a bit about Lewan. He's a very identifiable subject matter. So unlike a lot of these gods and goddesses we find in collections, like we don't really know. Maybe it's Backas, maybe it's, maybe it's Apollo. This one is very obvious. We know it from Virgil's Nia. He's the guy who tried to stop the Trojans from bringing the big old wooden horse in the city. He coined that phrase that got the Greek gods so upset. So they sent two giant sea serpents out of the water to crush him and his two sons to death before the eyes of the horrified Trojans who brought the horse into the city. The Greeks came out of the horse that killed everyone except for aas. Anas ends up in Rome or Laia, and his great, great grandsons are Romulus and Remus. I can promise you, everybody in Rome knows what that sculpture is. It's a very identifiable sub subs subject matter. But what makes it even more famous is that the sculpture was written up 2000 years ago. It was written up by our friend Pliny the Elder, and Pliny the Elder. As much as he loved that Venus, what he left, written for the Le. For example, in the Palace of Emperor Titus, a work that may be looked upon as preferable to any other production in the art of statuary. What is that? That's like a, it's like a five star Trip Advisor review. It's an incredible statement to have. And so when these artists are coming up and reading young Michelangelo in particular, reading about Pliny as a young man, he's reading about this sculpture. He will be called to Roman 1505. He'll be invited to build a gigantic tomb for Julius ii. He's there with his hammer and chisels in the courtyard of Julius ii, where he started to put his Apollo was in his Venus. In his little collection of sculptures, he puts the seas in that garden and eventually he will ask, which one of these sculptures is the lewan? Right? The answer he's gonna get in 1505 is, no one's seen the Lewan in about a thousand years. Might wanna go look at that Apollo again, Mike. On January 14th, 1506, Michelangelo was called away from breakfast by his best friend, Juliano Sangal. The two of them were brought to the other side of the city where a guy was dinging on a vineyard. This is a little Ybe. Robert's version's a little bit more romantic, but the idea is there they were walking through the newly til Earth. They came to a hole in the ground. They looked in the hole. They saw the statue of the Lewan and Juliano Sangal. This is told to us by the son of Juliano sga, Francesco. He says, this is the lewan of which Pini writes Before Michelangelo's eyes, the sculpture was brought to light. This sculpture unearthed before his eyes. Just when he's embarking on the job for this tomb, which sounds a lot like another one of the great works described by Pliny, Michelangelo starts, that's, that's doubling his efforts for the tomb. The work is purchased by Julius ii. It seems like Michelangelo's Destiny is going to be the greatest sculptural tomb ever to have been created. And then he's a study of the, this is a, the, but this is everybody is studying the Akon, and then Michelangelo is told he will not be doing the 12 apol, he will not be doing the tomb after all, could he please paint the 12 apostles in the Sistine Chapel ceiling? And the short version is there are no apostles in the Sistine Chapel ceiling. And the, the, the shorter version is it's because of Lewan. Lewan will be the work that allows Michelangelo to rethink the Sistine Chapel to come up with the idea of doing stories of Genesis when he needs to show this single figure of God separating light and dark in that contained space of his false architecture. You'll see he takes the image of Wan and he uses it for the tension in the torsion of Jesus, of, of, of God's body. In the second one, he creates the sun and the moon and the vegetable life. Look at the energy of God as he is ordering the sun into existence. And again, it is his interpretation of the wan and in that famous, famous image as God gives his own energy to man, you see the image of Lewan one last time as he fires up that energy and is ready to transmit that power to the reclining listless Adam. There is no more remarkable example of Catholic imagination than this. Michelangelo looked at an image of a pagan priest dying because that's what that is, and he will turn it into God bringing existence into existence. His Catholic imagination could look at an image of death and re-propose it to you as what is the quintessential image of life. The person who understood this best, of course, was Pope Benedict the 16th who happened to be the Pope during the 500th anniversary of the, um, of the Vatican Museums. And he highlighted the wan in his, he highlighted the wan in his speech. He is the one who will tell us, lemme see if I can find my page. May I now highlight a truth that is inscribed in the genetic code of the Vatican museums. That is, that the great classical and Judeo-Christian civilizations are not in opposition to each other, but converge in one plan of God. This is proven by the fact that the distant origins of this institution date back to a work that we may as well describe as profane, the magnificent sculptural group of the Kowan, but which in fact acquires its fullest and most authentic light in the Vatican context. It is the light of the human creature shaped by God of freedom in the drama of his redemption that extends between heaven and earth, flesh in spirit. It is the light of a beauty that shines out from within the work of art and leads the mind to open itself to the sublime where the creator creature cre, where the creature encounters the creator, encounters the creature made in his image and likeness. Thank you very much.

Q&A Session

1 1:03:59

Thank you very much for our speakers. Went on a little bit longer than planned due to, uh, technical difficulties, but grateful for being able to hear both lectures. We have, oh, I about guess about eight minutes for questions. uh, yes, this priest here at the back.

Speaker 6 1:04:13

Thanks so much. Julie worked for talks. the parallel is. How and language terms were reused, questioning typically sacrificed the, um, differentiation data. There's also process. This words I sacrifice are so worried that if we fulfill them in meeting they, the GaN meaning always drags us down. They're curious to note. This thing also happen in the our where the, the opinion, you, the opinion image transformed by Christian interpretation eventually dragged us down as we going back to thinking of it. It's really hope. It was,

Speaker 2 1:05:02

I'm not sure if that was a,

Speaker 3 1:05:04

I'm not sure I caught the question in that, but I think it's a vast, it's, it's really a wonderful point. I was just telling Liz, um, for those of you who may have a chance to get over to the Rockland Murphy Museum, and I hope you do. There is a scale model of, or new, uh, version of the W one there, which is quite wonderful. so one of the other things that sort of happens, I think along with thinking about sacrifice is thinking about things like the altar, which of course is also very loaded with lots of pagan associations. And Christians then have to rethink that, how they're going to, how they're going to reconstruct that, that structure and change, even change the word that they used to describe it from ara to Altare. But that's just another, another part of the story.

Speaker 5 1:05:50

I think the, uh, I think there's a kind of a, an interesting dual sense here. On one hand, the Christians are able to take and reimagine and transform. These, these pagan terms and pagan images. But from my perspective, um, and I think a lot of what I was trying to say is that there is a danger of indeed losing those works back to their original pagan significance. So that when we're looking at the school of Athens, we don't think of the school of Athens in relation to the painting of the so-called disputation, which is theology. We think of it as something that stands alone. So I think it is a very good point and something that to be one must be vigilant about because it is very easy having used so much of this lexicon of the ancient world that, that that lexicon be turned against. Its Christian, its new Christian meaning and return to its old pagan significance.

Speaker 3 1:06:43

Lemme just offer one other, example, which I didn't take time to talk about, but I was always asked for my students when they were first looking at early Christian art is why Daniel is always naked. And I, in least in Roman representations. And he is always frontally naked, standing in the Oran position with two little tame lions at his feet. And you know, it, an art historian would answer that, that that's a heroic type. So that's going to be the heroic figure, you know, the, the Greek hero. But that doesn't answer the question of why Daniel and not Abraham or Moses or others are not, are not naked as well. So my answer to that is that Daniel is a type of Christ as resurrection, as resurrected Christ. So it, it completely fills that image with something that we recognize as a hero, but also have to answer why he is naked. And as you know, Christ goes into the tomb as naked. And when the King Darius comes to un let Daniel out in the morning, he rolls aside a stone and finds him alive. So I think it's gonna, yeah,

Speaker 2 1:07:46

you're

Speaker 3 1:07:46

right. In another, another instance of that,

Speaker 2 1:07:51

this gentleman here.

Speaker 7 1:07:53

The, the Muslim, uh, the ed, the snake was a human head. I was curious what that meant. And that's a common stroke to not Yes. One big addition just is what you just said. Yeah. Is there any of the master animals motif going on there too with the, do you think the,

Speaker 3 1:08:16

I'm not sure. That's a great question. I have to think more about that.

Speaker 5 1:08:18

Uh, in so far as insofar as the mesino, it is a trope. It becomes, it does, it does give an indication of the mindset of the patron, to set up a dual between what is usually a female head speaking to Eve. And so it often is an indication that the patron who is making the work is thinking in terms of, uh, the Blessed Virgin and this New Eve. So yes, it is, it is a big signal when you see the head, when you see a head on the serpent, particularly a female head speaking to Eve. Often Eve's twin actually, and sometimes in this says often Eves twin

1 1:08:55

on that. At that point, maybe I'd say so. Ask Robin, just a follow up question. Uh, you're probably familiar with the image of Adam, I think comes from Syria where he is portrayed as Orpheus, but he is master of the animals there, I believe. Is he not? Yeah.

Speaker 3 1:09:07

Is that, is that what you meant by Orpheus? The idea of taming

Speaker 2 1:09:10

that? Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 1:09:18

I, I, and it's, and sometimes it's just sort of almost, uh, what's the word for this as, you know, symmetry as well. The other, I, I do think the Orpheus is the idea of taming the animals is certainly a part of that. imagery of Christ is Orpheus. the other thing that Daniel actually can, can call up to us as the image of the gladiator, fighting the animal, but he, they, they're pretty, they're not really very, you know, dangerous animals anymore.

Speaker 2 1:09:45

I have a gentleman here in the back.

Speaker 8 1:09:47

Just wondering, s model, to God is just mind blowing to me. I've never seen that or read about it, anything my dad since. Do you think that's also the president in, uh, Michael Angelos Moses as well? Hmm.

Speaker 5 1:10:03

So certainly the work was found by then, but I think the Moses might be working on another model, which is gonna be the model also for the Christ of the last judgment. Again, interests of time, trying to keep it to a dull roar. But the fact is there are, the seated figure is particularly the seated figure where, which you have the tension getting up. It's probably from the Belvedere torso, which was in circulation, owned by Andrea Brando, and then eventually purchased by the Vatican in 1530. That would be my guess for that, for that image.

1 1:10:37

There was a lady over here. Yes. What this will be our last question.

Speaker 9 1:10:40

Yeah, I was gonna ask what would be the contemporary equivalent for the Renaissance depictions of wonderful and just like, I don't know, but Swift, uh,

Speaker 2 1:10:54

husband,

Speaker 5 1:10:55

I, I, I, I don't wanna get the swifties it to kill me, but I'm, I'm not sure it would be quite as beautiful. Sorry. Um, I, it's a, it's a, it's a fascinating question and I think it's a really good question to end on because, I think it is, uh, uh, it, there is always, and I think both, both presentations really are talking about how this interest in engaging with the world, the Christian, the world that the Christians are in, and the interest in the case, particularly the Renaissance, they're very interested in holding up this aesthetic ideal. And I think also, I think you would say similarly. So this idea of appearing cultured that we heard about in the first presentation, I think that that's, that's always part and parcel of what the Christians are trying to do to, to, to communicate to that world. But there's also a, a parallel danger. And the parallel danger is absorbing too much or kowtowing too much to that world. And so I think it's a very interesting thing. I can't think off the top of my head of an example of that, the modern age. I can think of cases where it's like an egregious error, but not of something that's like, oh, that's a kind of a cool idea. but I think that's a very, very good question to be aware of.

Speaker 3 1:12:06

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 5 1:12:07

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 1:12:07

I, I was thinking about the, I can't remember what the artist is right now. I can't say the name, the sort of image of the Virgin Mary in saddle shoes. who is that artist? Which one? Virgin Mary in Saddle Shoes. She's, I don't know, it's a, if you trying to update the Virgin Mary, you know, so she looks like somebody from the, you know, contemporary, well, not so contemporary anymore, but yeah.

Speaker 5 1:12:28

But I don't think it's

Speaker 3 1:12:29

sort of distressing.

Speaker 5 1:12:30

I, they, they, they don't seem to be very successful. The attempts to kind of take Mary and make her look like a visual trope of Marilyn Monroe or Taylor Swift or whoever it may be, I don't, I don't, I just don't think it, it, that's something that's been very successful. Um, these, but it is a really, it's a really interesting point. Something to be aware of. I think.

1 1:12:48

Please join me in thanking our speaker.