Obscure Artists p. I

OK, so maybe he's not that obscure, but I never think about him when I think "luminaries of engraving" (and I think about that a lot)...Durer and Dore and Goya and Schongauer prints flash through my mind...but Goltzius is definitely one of my favorite print artists. Compositions are amazing and dynamic....definitely a fan of Northern Mannerism.

Looked him up on Wikipedia, and interestingly enough, his right hand was brutalized by a fire when he was a child. Fortunately for him (and us), the misshapen appendage was very conducive to holding and manipulating the burin, the requisite steel cutting tool for engraving.

Above is an engraving of Icarus, the ill-fated son of Daedalus, whose waxen wings could not deliver him from his place of exile (Crete). The boy crashed into the sea near a now eponymous island--Icaria--where my husband's grandfather is from.

Horny Moses

I don't know how many times I've painted and drawn this sculpture. Michelangelo's Moses will always have a special place in my heart. The first time I saw it in person, I was the only one in San Pietro in Vincoli, and I sketched the shadow and light that consummated the shapes and contours and dimension of the statue. So bold and magnetic.


In Michelangelo's version, Moses has horns because of an alternative translation of the Exodus passage citing the prophet's meeting with God. Another interpretation has Moses' face marred by a "divine radiation burn"; however, the first translation of the root in question to "ray of light" is post-biblical Hebrew, while the alternative meaning of "horn" occurs over 90 times in the Hebrew Bible. For artistic purposes, the horns provide an identifiable attribute for the Biblical figure.

Master print of Michelangelo's Moses, Jacob Matham, 1593.
Moses baptismal font, Christoph von Urach, 1518.

Landscaping in Hell

I'm not sure why I chose this particular etching from Dore's Illustrations of Dante's Divine Comedy, but it's probably something subliminal. Hmm. This is one of the pics showing some of the tenants of the middle ring of the seventh circle of the Inferno--the suicides. In Christian belief, those who take their own lives are directly usurping a sovereign power of God. So in Dante's version of hell, they're relegated to pretty nasty real estate. And they get turned into shrubs. Gnawed on by Harpies. The lost souls will not even be reunified with their bodies on Judgment Day--their corpses will hang in the branches of the shrubs for eternity.

I remember first being introduced to this book and these illustrations when I was in sixth grade. A girl named Keira asked me to come sit and look at the book with her in the library (I can't believe this was in the library)...the same girl who let me borrow the movie Seven a year later. Interesting friendship. But those images became embedded in my aesthetic...influenced my taste in the years to come...probably why I'm so attracted to print media.

Reading and Alchemy

I went to visit my parents and my sister who is on R&R from Iraq, and I've been reading Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. I love this man. He has such a way with words...gets right to the point but very eloquently, and he knows how to spin a good yarn. What a raconteur.

I have an older version of the book--one that cost $2.95 when it was printed :) Love that illustration.

As it says on the cover, it is the chronicle of a family living in an enchanted little village called Macondo. Before I began reading, I had read all about the magical realism genre and went through some Kafka and Saramago but didn't know what to expect. What a pleasant surprise. Alchemy, magic carpet rides, and contagious insomnia in perpetuum. I was especially moved by the mystical charm and transcendence and absolute wretchedness of Pietro Crespi's death (I'm still relatively at the beginning).

The progenitor of the Buendia brood is Jose Arcadio, husband to Ursula Iguaran. J.A. just becomes fiendishly fascinated by the knowledge and inventions that the gypsies bring to town, and he befriends the gypsy leader Melquiades, who introduces him to alchemy.

The engraving to the right was taken from the Elementa chemicae of the Leiden chemistry professor J.C. Barchusen. In the manuscript, there are a whole series of illustrations that illuminate the process that alchemists call the Opus Magnum (Great Work), which alludes to their belief in the divinity of creation and the plan of salvation within it. Materia prima, the volatile and chaotic base of all matter, contains incompatible opposites and seeks to be regulated and transmutated to a "redeemed state of perfect harmony" (from Alexander Roob's Hermetic Cabinet)-- the Philosopher's Stone or lapis philosophorum.

In the first medallion, there are the emblems of the lapis on the crescent moon: the lion represents normal gold, which must be twice driven by antimony, the wolf, in order to be purified. The dragon represents philosophical quicksilver--mercury. In circle #2, God corroborates with the alchemist--laying to rest any fear of impiety in the work. #3 shows chaos. #4 depicts the coat of arms of the lapis, and #5 shows the four elements.