tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-77089115500115746112024-03-13T11:15:46.413-07:00Martin Kemp's This and Thatanything and everything, from the standpoint of a historian of visual things.Martin Kemphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16855920123652538474noreply@blogger.comBlogger123125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7708911550011574611.post-79488909734456122392021-01-26T09:52:00.000-08:002021-01-26T09:52:05.839-08:00Foreign pestilence<p>When big diseases spread like the plague they almost invariably are characterised as coming from some horrible foreign parts, transmitted by dastardly foreigners. Just a few examples. Venereal disease was described in the 18th century as the French Pox and linked to the French Army. Spanish 'flu has entered medical law, as has the more generic Asian 'flu. Even trees are effected; think of Dutch elm disease. Virulent biting insects in Oxfordshire are branded as Blandford flies. Although the Chinese cover-up of COVID-19 outburst was reprehensible, I have some sympathy for their wish to avoid the balls of aggressive protein being regarded as the "China virus", the phrase that gushed from the mouth of Trump. Far from uniting us, the signs are that the pressure of pandemic is resulting in enhanced nationalism and national self-interest. Not encouraging.</p><p>I am due to be vaccinated on Saturday. Living 10 miles from Oxford, it would be odd not to receive the "Oxford Vaccine". I am pleased that 'my' university is in the forefront of the search for a vaccine. But is is (or should be) a world search. Suppressing nationalism and parochial attitudes is not easy.</p>Martin Kemphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16855920123652538474noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7708911550011574611.post-82911509216921732442021-01-26T09:25:00.002-08:002021-01-26T09:53:02.669-08:00failed story about Mona Lisa<p>Inspired by the story that the Louvre was to auction a private viewing of the <i>Mona Lisa </i>out of her frame to raise money, I wrote a short story about the painting's disappearance. I've always thought of myself as very much not a writer of fiction, and my effort has reinforced that opinion - encouraged by two kind novelists of my acquaintance. I don't regret trying. Like the formatted prose (a sort of poetry) I write, it was useful to flex my muscles in a different literary arena before returning to genres of writing that I can do at a more professional level. I am now inflicting it on anyone who wants to see what the problems were. </p><p>___________________</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">LA GIOCONDE<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">The leather soles of chief curator’s smart new shoes click on the polished floors as he strides past the parade of masterpieces lining the limitless halls. It is a progress grand enough for Napoleon mounted on his famed Marengo. The restored parquet tiles shine brightly – but for how long? No trace could possibly remain of the blood of his murdered predecessor in Dan Brown’s dishonest novel, which he disliked. He had serious doubts about the “Da Vinci Code Tour” foisted on the curators by the marketing people. At least he had persuaded them to add “Between Fiction and Fact” to the title of the tour. In spite of the American author’s duplicitous claims, there is too much of the former and only a thin skim of the latter, here and there. As a chief curator he was younger than usual but he was fast learning to stand up to institutional bullying.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">He walks briskly past Mantegna and Bellini without so much of glance. And many others. He feels a pang of sadness for the wonderful pictures that struggle to gain even passing attention from the touristic millions. The Uccello “Battle” could do with the conservators’, attentions he reminds himself. He’s suggested this but it’s still not on the agenda. The Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France might be based in the Louvre but as a national service it was not at the beck and call of the mighty museum. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">His job this morning is not to dwell on Leonardo’s penumbral “St John the Baptist’, leering at us from his panel with sharply pointing finger and reed cross, or the murky magic of the ‘Virgin of the Rocks’, which embarrassingly had looked so much better during its loan to London. The radiance of brightly cleaned “St Anne” does no favours to the pair of other Leonardos. They are still gearing up to clean the “Virgin”, which is not in good condition, but the inevitable controversy is a deterrent. The aggressive response to the cleaning of the “St Anne’ had given the curators much grief. Did they really want a repeat? Fortunately, not his decision, he smiled to himself.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">He doesn’t break his stride. He knows that they will be waiting for him in the gallery that opens off the corridor of halls. It is that day of the year when “La Gioconde” is removed from her protective prison to be inspected. So sealed in her fortified compartment – and so difficult to <i>see</i> – her welfare has to be taken on trust. He assumes that all is in order within. It has been so far, at least since the painting was last attacked in 1956 by the mentally disturbed Bolivian. Temperature and humidity are controlled within what are considered to be safe limits. The enclosure is as secure as it can be, given that it needs to be more-or-less visible to the millions who have come specifically to see it. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">His determined march to his destination is not so different from that of countless visitors, pressing on to gawp at the “Mona Lisa” and hurrying past treasures inherited from the grand institutions of regal and revolutionary France. Another hall passes by, once resplendent with rich red walls, like all the others, for as long as anyone could remember. There was a certain imperial grandeur to the old colour, but things now had to look modern – or that was what was said. The pale walls, graceless screens and lowered ceilings are not a gain, he muses ; a compromised modernity very unlike the original settings of the majority of the pictures. As a youngish man he felt a twinge of guilt for preferring the look of the past. He is almost there. The cattle-pen awaiting the corralled public when the museum opens tomorrow is not for him. He ignores the assertive arrow and the rather worn photo of Lisa and turns into the passage marked “sortie”. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">This is the room that hosts the most famous image in the world, as all the guides and brochures insist. He has grown not to like the peculiar orangey, sandy-beach colour of the lofty walls. It had looked attractive enough on the sample panel that the consultant decorator had shown them. It looked quite nicely varied in texture and warm in colour. “It’s like silk”, they were told. Spread over the full extent of the lofty room it just looks odd and pointless. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">As he enters, he is of course aware that there are the other paintings in the room. Notably conspicuous is the substantial ceiling painting of “Jupiter Expelling the Vices” by Paolo Veronese, one of the great Venetian masters. It features muscular Vices performing aerial acrobatics under pressure from Jupiter’s fistful of thunderbolts. It was originally located in a large oval compartment on a carved ceiling in the Doge’s Palace. It looks incongruous as a wall painting, but even he is not going to suggest that they mount it above the viewers in imitation of its original setting. It should go home to Venice, from where it had been purloined by Napoleon’s agents. The Louvre had fobbed off the Venetians with a decent copy. The same painter’s truly massive “Feast in the House of Levi” occupies most of the width of the end wall. But somehow the little dingy portrait overwhelms it. Few bother to ask what is going on in Veronese’s populous canvas. There are other smaller works of supreme quality, but they serve as mere space-fillers. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">The subject of their sole attention has already been released from it’s relatively new prison. It is still in the Renaissance frame that it was given in 1906. The sight of the protective glass reminds him that it was a one-time odd-job man and glass cleaner, Vincenzo Peruggia, who managed to steal the painting in 1911. He had parked the frame and glass in a stairwell before smuggling the panel out of a back door under a worker’s smock. Peruggia wanted to repatriate it to his native Italy, believing (falsely in this case) that it had been stolen by Napoleon. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">The queues of people who were keen to see the space vacated by Lisa were initially longer than of those who had earlier assembled to look at the real thing. Two impotent years of investigations passed before it was recovered, but not before Picasso and others had been rounded up as suspects. Peruggia eventually broke cover and was arrested when he tried to gain recompense for presenting it to the Uffizi.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">The poplar panel sits squarely on an experienced wooden easel. Standing spotlights, not too bright, are already focussed on it, and Walter Pater’s ‘submarine goddess’ is emerging to breathe the soft air, gaining discernible increments of life. The chief curator greets the sturdy picture-handlers, who have done the job before so affect a gruff French nonchalance. One lifting job is much like another. It’s just paint on a board, after all. The Director of Research and Restoration is there with two staff members. Two other painting curators have also arrived, together with three of the kind of security men that no-one would volunteer to meet on a dark night. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">The handlers place the framed picture face down on a small table and one of the conservation staff, equipped with a screwdriver, releases it from its gilded frame and glass. They have a few minutes before President is due to arrive.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 1cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">“Let’s take it over to the window”, the chief curator suggests, “while we’re waiting”. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">The handlers move the panel and easel over to a large window. He knows what will happen, but it is always thrilling. Newly bathed in living natural light, he watches Leonardo’s thin glazes of warm flesh tones play games of refraction and reflection with the white priming of the panel, while the blues – the best <i>lapis lazuli</i> from Ethiopia – vibrate in the distant spaces of the watery mountains. This is like visiting Leonardo’s studio, which he set up specifically to create varied and melting effects of light on faces. The action of natural light stands in marked contrast to the monotonously clinical illumination now favoured by our art galleries. He would have loved to hover at Leonardo’s elbow as the sun made its transit across the blue heavens of Florence, changing its spectral composition as it goes. The effects in winter were notably varied. After more than half a millennium, Lisa breathes again. He feels reluctant to express this openly. It sounds a touch pretentious. But he can sense that the other curators are witnessing something remarkable.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">The President Director of the Louvre arrives. He looks neither grand nor un-grand. His had been an unexpected internal appointment at a time when there was a powerful lobby for a woman from outside to be awarded the hugely prestigious post. Even though he was once ‘one of them’, the body language of the small group of museum employees changes in the presence of their boss. He is generally well-liked and greets each by name. He has been well briefed. He moves decisively to stand in front of the panel in the window, while the others shuffle backwards to provide him with elbow room. A silence, seemingly quite long, is broken.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 1cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">“Magnificent”. Another pause. ‘How I wish that she could always be seen like this. We wouldn’t have to argue about cleaning. The light of the skies does it for us… Shall we begin? We have our guests.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">Things are different this year. “La Gioconde<i>”</i> – roughly translatable as “The Smiling One” - is being put to work as a fund raiser. The Louvre has teamed up with Christie’s and the Parisian sale-room, Hôtel Drouot, to auction a privileged meeting with the sitter on her unencumbered panel. Bids are invited for one person and their guest to pass time with the wife of Francesco del Giocondo while she is undergoing her annual health check. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">Wags were opining that Lisa del Giocondo (neé Gherardini), a bourgeois Florentine woman from an aristocratic but impoverished Tuscan family, had become a courtesan, pimped by the Louvre. No matter that she passed her last years in a convent and seems to have been of unquestioned virtue. After the sapping ravages of the COVID virus, even the majestic Louvre needs to raise money by ruses that would never have been given house room previously. The chief curator just about suppresses his underlying distaste for the auction.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">Consolation prizes for bidders were to include personal tours of the Louvre by day and night in the company of Monsieur le President, and a scenic visit to the roof. Wealthy patrons are offered the chance to bid over the first two weeks in December. The winner, perhaps predictably, is a tough Russian oligarch, a friend of Putin, who collects modern and contemporary art on a large and record-breaking scale. The chief curator is not surprised. Just as Christie’s had auctioned Leonardo’s <i>Salvator Mundi</i> for $450 million in a sale of inflated recent art, so the top bidder sees Leonardo as more than an old master. Leonardo is the ultimate cultural star, unconstrained by history. He is paying little short of $100,000 for the most intimate of private views.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">In the hall in the Louvre, the easel has returned to its original position. The oligarch is ushered deferentially into the company with his wife (or partner) who looks precisely as she should, elegantly and slimly poised on elevated heels designed to test the newly polished parquet. He exudes bullet-headed power, expensively suited with no tie, and is greeted with a calculated display of French courtesy by the President, who effects introductions. The rich Russian speaks fluent English with a rolling accent but only poor French. They proceed in English, which the present-day staff of the Louvre speak ably but with a nagging reluctance. The overall air amongst the curatorial staff is uneasy.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">The Director outlines what they will do. The panel has been placed tenderly on a strip of velvet, face down. It has been reinforced since the last century within an oak surround which is spanned by three cross-bars. The idea is to hold the panel firmly but not with excessive rigidity. The head of conservation explains to the guests what they are seeing.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">The oddest feature is at the top of the panel. Just to the right of the centre, a rectangular wooden strip has been inserted vertically in the direction of the grain. Crossing the insertion are two pairs of inset dovetail joints (shaped like butterflies) – or rather the top joint had fallen out at some point and been replaced by a coarse canvas which has been stuck into the joint and down the added strip . There are some scrawled labels, no longer readily readable. An “H” and a “29” have been scribbled rapidly on to the scarred surface of the wood, seemingly some time ago. There are traces of sticky cream-coloured paper around the edges. It’s all a bit of a mess. Lisa’s underwear is unexpectedly scruffy. The unsightliness is shared by the backs of many old paintings, as the curators and restorers well know.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">The conservator explains that there is an old split in the wood at the top of the panel that previous restorers have secured on at least two occasions. Enjoying the wrong side of paintings is a rather specialised taste, but the oligarch understands that he is seeing a ‘secret’ that few have been privileged to witness. But he is becoming restless to find that he is a passive bit-player in the conservators’ arcane mini-drama. He is used to controlling matters and being the centre of attention.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">The main concern of the staff is whether the panel has warped during the last 12 months. As wooden panels go, the warping is not severe, but every quotient of curvature puts strain on the wood and the layers of priming and the paint. There are already more than enough cracks. The conservators have devised a special tool to detect renewed warping. It consists of a bar on to which a micrometer has been ingeniously mounted. It is nicknamed the “giocondometer”. Tiny fractions of millimetres are duly registered and compared to previous measurements. The panel has moved slightly as is to be expected. Basically it is OK. They also check for infestation. All that is apparent are some old woodworm holes.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">The panel is tuned over and the painted surface gently dusted, The chief curator always gets a frisson from the moment when the revered image becomes a very material object, as it was when Leonardo was working on it and transported it across the mountain passes into France three years before his death. The experts look carefully at the crack, which darts down into Lisa’s hairline. The raised and jagged edges of the fissure are clearly apparent, as are some fringes of discolouration from earlier retouching. The previous year one of the conservators had effected a quick repair to secure a small strip of lifted paint beside the crack. Old pictures need loving care and attention. This time no immediate actions need to be taken. However, the rather neglected guests do need attention.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">They are each given a hands-free magnifier, with two rectangular lenses set in the front of a stout plastic band, adjustable at the rear. The magnifiers look a bit like motorcycle goggles. The panel is set back on its easel and the lights repositioned. The oligarch goes first, guided to various regions of the painting by chief curator. They exchange a few remarks. The chief curator points out that the natural edge of the original paint surface ends inside the margins of the polar panel. This means that what was visible of the flanking columns was only ever thin slivers, unlike the fuller columns in most of the copies and in contrast to what many of the books say.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">As the oligarch peers through his goggles, he finds the deep network of cracks assertively unsettling. Gradually and subconsciously they retreat in his eyes to become little more than scratchy background noise, like the crackles on an ancient blues record. He begins to navigate through the pictorial wonders. He is astonished at how little seems definite. Nothing seems defined. What seemed like edges are not. From normal viewing distance the bridge visible over Lisa’s shoulder seemed to be a structure. Under magnification it is the ghost of a bridge. The same with the mountains. Even the features of her face remain elusive. The famous smile is deeply uncertain in its contours. The fiddly knot design at the neckline of her dress is more defined, but still not absolutely. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">Leonardo draws us into the image but then leaves us to do the work of definition. The elusive subtleties are far beyond the capacity of the modern sensation-seekers whose art he normally purchased. The magnifier is becoming irksome. He feels the need to recapture what Leonardo himself saw and what we can see with our natural eyesight. He takes off the glasses, thrusts them into the chief curator’s hands, and stares intensively. No-one speaks. He had bid to see the painting as a kind of trophy experience. But this experience transcends the customary kudos of power.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 1cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">“Your go”, he says, turning to his companion. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">She looks with her magnifier in prolonged silence, slowly and systematically, or so it seems. She has so far said almost nothing. The staff anticipate a dumb remark to which they will politely respond. “Why are the cracks so different in the face and in the hands?”. A good and considered question. The conservator says that the layers of paint in her head, into which Leonardo had put sustained effort, probably over a number of years, are much thicker and more varied in composition than in the hands. The thicker layers are prone to deep cracking. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 1cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">“Could you do something about the cracks? Give it a clean?”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 1cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">The president gives a strangled laugh. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 1cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">“It would be the most difficult clean in the world. It’s not going to happen on my watch”. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 1cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">“Even if I pay for it?”, her partner jokes. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 1cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">“Even then” is the answer. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 1cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">Everyone laughs spontaneously. The whole atmosphere has lightened. Leonardo has performed his act of aesthetic diplomacy, across social and national divisions, with Lisa’s teasing connivance. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">12 months have passed. The same walk, his shoes now fully broken in. It is an established ritual. It helps bond the chief curator to the inner world of the greatest of all national museums. He feels good. At least this year they could get on with the job without paying guests. He says as much as he greets the small team assembled in the room. No Director this year and no stern security men. They agree to repeat the window experience, not because it is necessary but because they can, and it is deeply moving. The same man with the same screwdriver loosens the panel and its oak surround within its old frame. Something feels not quite right. Lifting the panel free, he feels something bizarre. The weight is wrong. It is much too light. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 1cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">“No’ he says, quietly. “No, no”, more loudly. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 1cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">The others press in and ask what is wrong, fearing something very unwelcome. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 1cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">“This is not it”, he states in a loud whisper. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">Something has happened that makes no sense. There is no logic. They had witnessed the painting going back into its frame and prison last year. The chief restorer grabs the panel. He raps it with his knuckles. It makes a plasticky sound. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 1cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">“This”, he says slowly and deliberately, “is a replica made by 3-D printing”. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">He had seen how a few leading companies in the world could now create digital replicas which are uncannily true in colour, tone and texture. Front and back. The tell-tale signs that the replicas are not the real thing are the weight and the touch (above all the temperature). No-one could tell peering at the painting in its prison. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 1cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">“I’ll get the Director” shouts one of the curators, breaking into a run. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 1cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">The chief curator calls the Director’s mobile. “Come now, please, it is an emergency”. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 1cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">The other curator calls security. “There has been a theft. We must shut down everything. Now! Immediately”. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 1cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">Within seconds a raucous siren is shrieking.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">The chief curator feels ill, a deep, numb nothingness streaked with fear. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 1cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">“How, who, when…? Had the oligarch loved the picture too much? Maybe a stupid thought. Think, think. It could have been a year ago. It could have been yesterday. Is it an inside job?”. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 1cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">Nothing makes sense. They are back in 1911, only worse. They are going to crucified by the world-wide media. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">To buy time they could put it back and tell no-one other than the police. Or they could just put it back and pretend. In the vortex of the chief curator’s teeming thoughts nothing is unthinkable – other than loss itself.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p><br /></p>Martin Kemphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16855920123652538474noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7708911550011574611.post-32255643427540507832020-12-05T02:50:00.000-08:002020-12-05T02:50:07.771-08:00Brexit Frexit<p>It is no surprise that the French are driving talks on to the rocks. Since the age of De Gaulle, there has been a sustained undercurrent of hostility towards England (I am deliberately not saying the UK), just as there has been a sustained unease and worse about Europe on the part of the Tory right and Labour left. The French have fought the England-Germany axis over the years. Historically the great enmity has been French/English not German/English. The period 1900-1945 was an anomaly. Once a French negotiator was appointed the dice was loaded.</p><p>I saw a notable symptom of the French aspiring to diminish the status of English and the English at the opening of Louvre Abu Dhabi. The guest of honour and main speaker was Macron. He arrived 2 hours later and delivered an exceedingly long speech, the last third of which was about French resuming its role as <i>the</i> world language. It was the wrong message in the wrong place at the wrong time. He said hello to me with considerable personal charm. Reality and charm are very different things.</p><p>I say this as a wholly committed European and internationalist - and from the perspective of the 'auld alliance' between France and Scotland.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Martin Kemphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16855920123652538474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7708911550011574611.post-60035293807698372432020-11-28T06:41:00.002-08:002020-11-28T06:41:40.600-08:00Diego Maradona the reality<p> A great splurge of ecstasy over Maradona. It seems devoid of perspective and serious assessment of his actual achievement. He had extraordinary skills and some incredible moments, which lend themselves to clips on the internet - above all from the 1986 world cup. He was also a media dream. Always a story, often lurid. But let's look at his record. Won one world cup. Pele won three. Two league titles in Italy, none in Spain. An average of 0.47 goals per game in Europe. Internationally his average was 0.37. Not in the same league as a goal-scorer as Messi (int ave 0.5) and Rinaldo (0.6). Charlton's ave was 0.46 from the midfield. Not as great as Cruyff as a reformer of the game. This assessment does not involve the 'hand of god' goal. Most professional sportsmen in team games cheat to one degree or another - and I support Scotland. </p><p><br /></p>Martin Kemphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16855920123652538474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7708911550011574611.post-60629986860719029592020-11-26T10:27:00.002-08:002020-11-26T10:28:43.356-08:00 jabs and jingoism. the politics of COVID<p>The search for vaccines should be a great international endeavour, in research and not least in delivery. To see the promise of the "Oxford Vaccine" highjacked for crude nationalistic and political purposes by the beastly Boris is sickening. It resembles Trump's insistence on referring to the "Chinese virus". As emeritus prof at Oxford and I am delighted for the university but I am not interested in waving some kind of parochial flag. Teams of researchers in major Oxford labs are invariably international and multi-ethnic. They are part of a worldwide human thrust to control the virus and to save our lives. </p><p>There is of course the related question of whether British labs will be as rich with international talent after the disaster of Brexit.</p>Martin Kemphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16855920123652538474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7708911550011574611.post-50739087847336459622020-11-11T08:31:00.008-08:002020-11-11T08:34:31.574-08:00talks on the look of the Corona virus and on Dante.<p><span style="font-size: medium;">Two talks on the internet. Rather different subjects. It's a funny medium, not at all comparable to a live audience in the same space. I find it lessens fluency. <span style="font-family: Times-Roman;">Not tv. Not radio. Maybe a conversational tone would work better than my rhetoric.</span></span></p><p><span class="" style="font-family: Times-Roman;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Re. the Dante lecture. As usual, my first talk on a subject was bit experimental (i.e. not under control). I am also out of practice, not match fit.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16pt;">American Chemical Society talk on microscopic geometry and representations of the Corona Virus:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://tnsteam.org/kemp" style="color: #954f72;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">tnsteam.org/kemp</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16pt;">_________________________________________<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16pt;">Leconfield lecture of the British-Italian Society on Dante and the Art of Divine light<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><u><span style="color: blue; font-family: Times-Roman, serif; font-size: 14pt; font-weight: normal;"><a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/tvKF7JDL1QLut_TvH4ZH7BfiFPjadWP0z30NYWT7iZJ2HjUKGeB1kgaVSEoOiVee.7BdUtSSYqSMqHTvO" style="color: #954f72;">https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/tvKF7JDL1QLut_TvH4ZH7BfiFPjadWP0z30NYWT7iZJ2HjUKGeB1kgaVSEoOiVee.7BdUtSSYqSMqHTvO</a></span></u><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, serif; font-size: 14pt; font-weight: normal;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, serif; font-size: 14pt; font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, serif; font-size: 14pt; font-weight: normal;">Passcode: #&8NsyFB</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>Martin Kemphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16855920123652538474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7708911550011574611.post-31722303161100096582020-11-05T07:20:00.002-08:002020-11-05T07:20:26.523-08:00maybe Biden<p> Well, perhaps.... maybe... But even if Biden is elected, the fact that Trump can have such a level of near-success means that things are very bad in the US. The electoral college system needs reform, along with much else in the constitution.</p><p>I will only believe that Trump has vacated the presidency when he and his baggage (human and material) are seen actually leaving the White House. If he does,</p><p>The UK is heading in a comparable direction with the centralised corruption of the Johnson regime, above all in its outsourcing of huge contracts to cronies.</p>Martin Kemphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16855920123652538474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7708911550011574611.post-87669457310628415882020-11-04T04:09:00.004-08:002020-11-04T04:11:00.702-08:00US election, the rape of reason<p> The rape of the planet, the rape of reason, the rape of democracy, the rape of decency, the rape of morality, the rape of equalities. This will be the consequence. The whole of the US electorate must take the blame. That the Democrats have abjectly failed in the last two elections to promote a candidate who offers any level of inspiration and freshness makes them partners in the crime. We are confronted by men and women bristling with prejudice and guns. A truly sick society.</p>Martin Kemphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16855920123652538474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7708911550011574611.post-66539003414345908952020-11-03T01:58:00.002-08:002020-11-03T01:58:30.601-08:00comments - sorry<p> Almost all the comments I receive are from people / organisations offering unwanted services. The only practical way of coping has been to delete all. This means that the few genuine comments are ditched as well. Sorry. </p>Martin Kemphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16855920123652538474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7708911550011574611.post-78717499337189266952020-11-03T01:49:00.003-08:002020-11-03T01:49:46.391-08:00USA election and Trump and the constitution<p> If I believed in a God I would pray. If Trump wins, this will prove that God does not exist / does not care. If Trump wins, I will almost certainly boycott America. I have resisted doing this because it discomforts only people who for the most part are not Trump supporters. But in a supposed 'democracy' the whole electorate must be held responsible for making the same gross mistake twice. And, by the way, the catastrophically out-of-date American constitution needs radical re-casting.</p>Martin Kemphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16855920123652538474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7708911550011574611.post-44277521222634112532020-09-21T02:36:00.001-07:002020-09-21T02:36:22.008-07:00COVID corruption and cuddly cronies<p> I have now resorted to switching off the radio when government ministers appear with monotonous regularity on the Today programme to misrepresent everything to do with the Covid crisis. A regular spokesman is Grant Shapps (Transport Minister!!) presumably because he is a master of deception. He founded a web marketing company that pushed books on how to become 'stinking rich', using the false name, Michael Green.</p><p>The really big corruption is not tackled by BBC and other media interviews. The emergency measures to deal with COVID suspended the need for competitive tendering for government contracts. This has allowed the assigning of millions of pounds to private companies like Serco and G4S (of Olympics infamy) which have direct links with the Tory party and advisers, most notoriously Cummings. The head of the testing regime, Dido Harding, is a Tory peer and wife of former MP with no relevant experience of health administration. Now, as a cuddly crony, she is to rewarded for incompetence by being appointed to be head of the National Health Institute which replaces the falsely maligned Public Health England.</p><p>Where is the outcry? It seems to have become accepted that the political system is now corrupted by big money and a Johnsonian mode of nepotism. We have always faced vested interests, but this is something new and in excess of past excesses. </p>Martin Kemphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16855920123652538474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7708911550011574611.post-69115204441833329552020-07-13T07:17:00.000-07:002020-07-13T07:17:27.065-07:00back operation and new bookI see that I have not updated my medical bulletin. In case anyone is interested.<div><br /></div><div>Three weeks after the operation, my back pain suddenly diminished to almost nothing, which was the object of the spinal decompression. The crushed nerve to my right leg means that it is not working optimally, but I am doing physio to strengthen the muscles etc. I am walking better, but not over distances of more than about 1 mile. I am determined to make progress. My physio is Marcel Wallace, Marina Wallace’s son, who lives in Vancouver!</div><div>Major thanks to the excellent surgeon, Roy Chaudhary. He was confident that the op had gone well. He was right.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have delivered my book, "Heavenly Visions. Dante and the Art of Divine Light", to Lund Humfries. Aiming for publication in April during Dante's 700th anniversary. I see it as a new "paragone", the comparison of the arts. Whether the text is any good, the visuals should be spectacular.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is a fragment from the introduction.</div><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">"The present book is in part about Dante Alighieri’s understanding of light [based on Mediaeval optics] and the legacy of his <i>Paradiso</i>. This involves both the direct sense of the considerable impact of his extraordinary vision, and also the general diffusion of his literary portrayal of the extra-terrestrial realm of spiritual light. But it is also a <i>paragone</i> study in what poetry can do and what painting can do. We will see Dante and the painters mutually striving to meet one of the greatest of all visual challenges. That challenge was how to describe extremities of divine light that were beyond the scope of our earth-bound sense of sight."<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><br /></div><div><div><br /><div><br /></div></div></div>Martin Kemphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16855920123652538474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7708911550011574611.post-21485645278056175442020-07-13T06:59:00.000-07:002020-07-13T06:59:33.642-07:00Universities and colleges. A radical solutionThe government, such as it is, seem to be looking at tertiary education and the university/ college divide.<div>Three years ago I wrote a blog on this, offering a radical solution. I am copying part of it below. (This also helps a bit with my failure to write as regularly as I keep promising myself.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Let's ask some basic questions. Why is it that at age 18 (or so) we have determined that teenagers should embark on monolithic studies of three years (or four in Scotland) in highly defined areas in a way that determines much in their future lives, and more or less ensures that they will thereafter undergo no further formal education. <br /><br />Why three or four years at this point in someone's life? There is no good basis for this "rule". If there is one single lesson I learnt over the course of my many years in the education world, it is that people develop at very different rates and ways, and have very diverse forms of intelligence and skill. Our current system cannot handle this diversity and fails most 16 to 18-year-olds to greater of lesser degrees.<br /><br />My suggestion is that we think of scrapping the current assumptions about further education. <br /><br />At school leaving age (itself open to revision), each student would be given a set number of further education credits (perhaps equivalent to a 3-year course) that they could take up at any point in their lives. Each credit would be "spent" on a course in a particular area of activity, ranging from carpentry to chemistry. This might be taken immediately following school, or after some kind of work experience. Subsequent credits could be taken in a continuous batch of studies over the same kind of period as now (above all for people of an academic inclination, who might move on to post-credit, "graduate" work), or at any time and after any interval of years. Someone might, for instance, gain some work experience in the law or in the building trade immediately on leaving school, and decide that they need to to upgrade their formal qualifications (ideally in collaboration with an employer). Or they might decide to study something different, having gained some experience and a broader perspective. Or they might study for 2 years, leaving for employment, with the equivalent of one year's credits still available for future use. Someone else might want to change direction at any point in their life, either radically or re-tooling in their present area of activity to master new directions which were not apparent during their initial training. The requirement of jobs are not static in the present age of rapid technological and other changes. Someone who missed out on schooling, not having engaged with study, would have the opportunity to re-engage and gain valuable credits. None would be cast on the rubbish heap at 16 or later. Practical intelligence would be given as much chance to flower as academic intelligence.<br /><br />No-one would be obliged to take up their credits. Someone who went straight into employment may achieve what they desire without further formal study. Someone who retires with, say, a year's credits still available might seek a fulfilling direction in the many years that will remain for many retirees.<br /><br />Higher education providers would need to re-think what they teach, how they attract students and the relationships of the qualifications to the worlds of employment. Students would be able assess the trajectory of their lives from a broader perspective. Schools would need to think about what diverse students need to launch themselves on worthwhile lives. Less exams and more actual teaching.<br /><br />This flexible system might seem like a recipe for chaos in not knowing how many are going to be studying what. But the Open University has taught us that such numbers are forecastable on statistical basis. The system would settle down quite quickly.<br /><br />The finance dimension needs thinking through. It may be that the equivalent of a year's study is met automatically by the state. Subsequently, courses could be financed by a cocktail of official and private support, the latter involving employers and perhaps direct loans. It may be that employers would contribute to a central pot of funds for later qualifications and re-tooling courses.<br /><br />I have been the beneficiary of the present system. It suited a clever state-school boy of the 1950s and 1960s. There are increasingly few that it really suits over the full course of their lives. Let's seriously ask, "why three or four years in a row?'.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Martin Kemphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16855920123652538474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7708911550011574611.post-44366619030572324962020-06-13T06:00:00.003-07:002020-06-13T06:03:13.640-07:00Statues<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: times; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 21.33333396911621px;">I sent this to the <i>Guardian</i> but they did not reply</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Scandalous statues in Bristol and anywhere<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">MARTIN KEMP<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">The toppling in Bristol of the bronze statue of Edward Colston, slave trader and major benefactor (or should it be benefactor and major slave trader?) raises complex issues, and my own opinion has changed somewhat in the light of recent events.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">My instinct as an art historian is not to approve of the destruction / vandalism of a work of art – though in truth the statue by John Cassidy of Manchester in does not rise above the competent. We obviously should not decide such an issue on the basis of its perceived quality of a work of art. BUT there is a memorial to Colston in the decommissioned church of All Saints in Bristol. It was designed by the excellent architect James Gibbs (Church of St. Martin’s in the Fields etc.) with a funeral effigy by John Michael Rysbrack, as good a sculptor as there was in Britain at that time. With such an artistic pedigree, do we protect the memorial while not regretting (too much) the fall of Cassidy’s routine bronze? There’s also a fine swagger portrait of Colston by Jonnathan Richardson, previously in the Mayor’s office (present location withheld). Do we slash it with a sharp instrument?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">There are long historical antecedents to acts of destruction. Our churches and collections of Mediaeval art bear vivid witness to the iconoclastic destruction of “papist” images. The issue of “graven” images runs as a centuries-old sore across the various Christian denominations. Such British pre-Reformation images as still survive are now likely to admired in historic venues and museums administred by non-Catholics. We may also recall the dynamiting of the very giant Buddhas of Bamiyan by the Taliban in 2001. That was a World Heritage Site. There is a huge number of such events, which we are now likely to denounce.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">I have tended to think that statues of people who incite our disapproval in whole or in part are an integral part of the historic fabric of a place, which cannot be productively re-modelled, and that it is best that they are seen to serve as memorials to values that we no longer espouse. However these matters are complicated and not readily subject to a simple formula.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Let us take as an example the vandalism in 2017 of statue of the pioneer gynaecologist, J. Marion Sims , and its subsequent removal from its pedestal on the edge of New York’s Central Park. It was taken to the cemetery where Sims is buried. Sims’s “experiments’ on black women are taken as outweighing his apparent virtues, as measured on today’s scales. But let’s look at Central Park itself, one of the signature assets of the Big Apple. To create it in 1857 about 16,000 people were involuntarily displaced, and schools, churches, a convent and residential village were destroyed. As we might suspect, the residents were mainly black. Do we renounce Central Park? Do we return the sites to the descendants of the displaced? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Many of our valued places, institutions and artworks were bankrolled by money that we would now regard us unclean, including not a few Oxbridge Colleges – and good number of Renaissance masterpieces.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">My answer <i>was </i>that we should not hide the past and that it is better to know about it than deny it. Education, in this case, is the conventional answer. Now I am not so sure. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">The erecting a public monument is political-cum-social act. Removing it is a legitimate response to the original act. I say “removal” very deliberately not destruction. The statues are mute but visually eloquent witnesses to our history and our deployment of art in the service of causes that we have (or should have) long since abandoned. Local solutions should be found as to where to re-locate them, ideally where they can serve an active cultural role. The empty plinths, like that in Trafalgar Square, can support major works by contemporary artists. Let’s build something new on the debris of what we now regard as shameful attitudes.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Two footnotes.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">1. For 99% of the time no-one notices the statues, unless they portray someone very famous like Churchill. They are just part of the urban scenery.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">2. It is interesting that a bronze effigies of largely forgotten, eldery white men can still be invested with such presence and meaning when the occasion arises.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">For Central Park, see Sarah Waxman<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: times; font-weight: bold; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><a href="https://www.ny.com/articles/centralpark.html" style="color: #954f72;">https://www.ny.com/articles/centralpark.html</a><o:p></o:p></p>Martin Kemphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16855920123652538474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7708911550011574611.post-14897558386070482912020-06-09T10:54:00.000-07:002020-06-09T10:55:10.599-07:00spine operationThe operation on my spine, to make space for trapped neves, seemed to go well. I was home the next morning, in good shape, apparently a miracle of Biblical proportions. But... and it is a big but, since that time I have experienced severe back pain, which means I can only just get around the house. The wound is very clean, so no infection. It might be muscles spasms. I am in touch with the surgeon and we are working on the problem. Very disappointing.<br />
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In my next blog, I will talk about the destruction of 'racist' statues, but don't have ooomph to do it now.Martin Kemphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16855920123652538474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7708911550011574611.post-49856508022722844132020-06-01T02:35:00.001-07:002020-06-01T02:35:26.046-07:00I go into hospital for my 'spinal decompression' surgery tomorrow. Operated though a keyhole. I hope to be operational again in reasonably short order. We will see... More afterwards.<br />
<br />Martin Kemphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16855920123652538474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7708911550011574611.post-84301163945420414942020-05-22T10:30:00.002-07:002020-05-22T10:30:31.533-07:00Dante book and no blogNo recent blogs. Sorry.<br />
I have been writing intensively. "Visions of Heaven. Dante and Divine light in Art".<br />
I am giving priority to finishing the chapters before I have an operation on my back on 2nd June. Spinal stenosis has crunched my mobility. I hope my ability to get about will be restored to a workable degree.<br />
I am more than half way through the last full chapter. Watch this space (if you want to) once the chapter is in draft.Martin Kemphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16855920123652538474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7708911550011574611.post-628667654386314082020-04-30T11:20:00.000-07:002020-04-30T14:22:30.763-07:00Covid glossary<b>A Challenge - </b> something we have failed at<br />
<b>"The Science" - </b>which of the varied opinions, theories, analyses is most useful politically<br />
<b>Open / Transparent - </b> anything we can't keep hidden<br />
<b>Ending the Lockdown - </b>planning based on guesswork<br />
<b>Promises - </b>obsolete statements<br />
<b>Flattening the curve </b>- why there is another peak<br />
<b>Press Conference - </b>an opportunity to parade well-rehearsed words that add up to nothing<br />
<b>Media Interview - </b> ditto<br />
<b>Leadership (BJ) - </b>making a lot of blustering noise that adds up to nothing<br />
<b>Brexit - </b>we are leaving, or not<br />
<b>Care Homes - </b>highly profitable enterprises<br />
<b>Ethnic Minorities - </b> a group of people against whom we once discriminated and still will when all this is over<br />
<b>Those at risk - </b>those who can be sacrificed.<br />
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(Contributions welcomed)<br />
<br />Martin Kemphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16855920123652538474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7708911550011574611.post-31299461515035119282020-04-25T08:49:00.000-07:002020-04-25T08:49:41.500-07:00acronyms and arroganceDuring current crisis we are assailed with acronyms. To give one example, an intensive care unit becomes an ICU. Oh yes, we also have PPE.<br />
This is part of a broader and pernicious trend. I still take <i>Nature</i> on a regular basis, having written a column for a number of years. At one time I could understand about one third of the content, could see what is going on in another third and could not grapple with the other third. Now, the great majority of the articles are closed book to me. Synopses are dominated by acronyms to which I do not have access and the articles themselves by torrents of data translated into graphs of a kind I can't handle. <br />
Given my forthcoming (when?) back operation I have had to learn that CSF = cerebrospinal fluid. If it leaks, I am in trouble.<br />
<span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-size: 15.84000015258789px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">What is the purpose of acronyms? To economise, but not to a really significant degree. Their main purpose is make the user sound knowledgeable, like an insider and a professional. They are an affectation. They also carry a kind of high-tech air like all the acronyms that plague computer-speak. How many know what a URL stands for? We may know what it does. But it stands for 'Uniform Source Locator', which is as incomprehensible to me as the acronym. </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-size: 15.84000015258789px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-size: 15.84000015258789px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I am the founder and sole member (to date) of <b>SAAC</b>. This is the Society for the Abolition of ACronyms. Yes, I know it's not a proper acronym, but that applies to many (most?) these days. There are also many organisations for which bizarre names have been concocted because they provide a good acronym. </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-size: 15.84000015258789px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">This is loosing battle - like most of mine - but I'm not giving up. </span></span>Martin Kemphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16855920123652538474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7708911550011574611.post-30020476503762619822020-04-19T02:36:00.000-07:002020-04-19T02:38:28.197-07:00virus, science, and more on the scrapheap'We follow the science'. That or something like it has been the politicians' mantra. But there is no such thing as "the science". There are well-informed. clever people who pursue research, ranging from specialist modellers of probabilities and possibilities to racing researchers set on the holy grail of a vaccine. We hear that vaccines are not far away. We hear that a vaccine is never going to do the job against this 'clever' virus. We hear that we will be out of the wood (according to various timescales) or that we will have to live (and die) with the virus for the foreseeable future. We are told that people with antibodies are safe. We hear that we do not know whether we can acquire immunity from a second infection. With a such a new and unpredictable virus, there are huge uncertainties. Translating these uncertainties into policies is the politicians' job. When they get things wrong they get the blame (unless their name is Trump). But the scientists should also share the blame. They appear on the media (flattered and self-important) to make ex-cathedra pronouncements based on their particular skill-sets. "The evidence tell us...". Evidence only tells us something there is a theory and/or a set of assumptions. I am concentrating on what is actually happening, listening to the news and hearing the main scientific pronouncements, but the rest seems to me to be media noise. Hooray for Radio 3. Science is hugely powerful and very necessary, but "science' tells us many things. Which of these things do we "follow"? There will be huge winners and losers in this game of scientific snakes-and-ladders.<br />
<br />
A footnote on the Sumption survival of the fittest thesis.<br />
<div class="" style="font-family: Times-Roman;">
State what seems to be unassailable premise: ‘old people are more likely to die that younger ones’. What flows from this, by a series of steps which have the air of logic, is that if everybody cannot be treated, the old should not be.</div>
<div class="" style="font-family: Times-Roman;">
But the initial premise has tacit assumptions / biases in it. The ‘old’ are singled out, not infants, pregnant mothers, the disabled, those on social care, those in care homes, those with severe mental problems… The <b class="">only</b> outcome of the premise is that the old should be left to die.</div>
<div class="" style="font-family: Times-Roman;">
If I start from the ethical premise that everyone has the same right to a further year (on other unit of time) of life and be given assistance to achieve that goal (unless the quality of life is such as to bring this into question), the outcome is utterly different. At the end of the year, the same equation kicks in. The old will of course on average die more quickly than younger people , but a caring society should not pursue remorseless if tacit policy to cleanse of society of old people.</div>
<div class="" style="font-family: Times-Roman;">
Of course, I am biased in this. My birth certificate tells me that I am "old". I would like to think this is fake news, but it seems to be true.</div>
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<br />Martin Kemphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16855920123652538474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7708911550011574611.post-69153188453272038442020-04-12T03:26:00.000-07:002020-04-12T03:26:08.344-07:00NHS - Immigration - VirusThe MRI scan of my back was set up by someone of Asian ancestry. The scan was made by someone of (probably) far eastern ancestry. Both the NHS physiotherapists were of Asian ancestry. The local post office is run by a husband and wife of Asian ancestry (who are trying to get me a large bag of rice from the cash and carry since the Co-op is not coping with shelf-strippers). The local store and newsagents is run by a family of Asian ancestry. The 'Indian' restaurant is doing take-aways.. and so on.<br />
They have been pleasant, helpful and professional. They are essential members of our community and are at risk in the frontline.<br />
And yet we read of the Home Office refusing to fast-track or register qualified practitioners and willing workers who do not fit with their hostile immigration rules. An organisation like the Home Office can be collectively racist even if the individual members are not. The net effect of procedures and criteria, with each person / department protecting their own backs, in the face of their political masters and tabloid press, is racist.<br />
This is a time when we can all show our friendship and gratitude to who have chosen to join and participate in our community.Martin Kemphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16855920123652538474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7708911550011574611.post-77973040187537360172020-04-09T10:57:00.000-07:002020-04-09T11:06:56.834-07:00spinal stenosisToday an MRI scan on my back to determine what precisely is wrong and what, if anything, can be done about it. The test was conducted at the Manor private hospital in Oxford, which goes against my principles. However the NHS refused a scan and were not too much bothered if I am assigned to the scrap heap. The virus is the (only) thing. Two days ago I tested how far I could walk in Blenheim park. My right leg is only partly functional. I struggled to the pleasure gardens and back, not much more than I mile. 3 months ago this would not have counted as a walk, let alone exercise. By the evening I had difficulty in walking at all. As I said before, it's notable how perspectives can change.<br />
<br />
A few years ago I wrote a bit of formatted prose on a neighbour whom I could see in the lane from the window of my study on the first floor. It was printed in the booklet of his funeral service. It has a new resonance for me, now that mobility is a challenge not an assumption.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">The Man with Two Sticks<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">A man frail and tall, not old in counted years,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Shuffles inch by inch from the shadowed lane<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">With a caring lady who can hardly go so slow.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The radiant sun enters his upturned eyes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> A quantum of the youthful energy for which he yearns.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Where is the laughing running boy who knew<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Nothing of impediments?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">“I will get the car” she says, striding up the gentle slope,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Released into normalities of time, space and locomotion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">A low wall is close but separated from him<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">By a daunting distance of straining effort.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">He reaches out for the stony seat with a probing stick,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Turning bit by unwilling bit to crease and settle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">An old lady goes by arthritically. She is envied.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The black car arrives. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">He is folded and loaded. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">To go to somewhere once familiar, once easy,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Now transformed into a theatre. Of impossibilities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">An inch is a foot is a yard is a mile.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">A day is a week is a month is a year.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Their will and love annealed in the flame of patient hope.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The channel is swum. Everest is conquered.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">“All on your own, yes, all on your own”,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">His mother’s reward for infant steps. Long ago. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br />Martin Kemphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16855920123652538474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7708911550011574611.post-82467004605501262952020-04-06T12:14:00.002-07:002020-04-06T12:14:45.520-07:00on the Judge's scrapheapThe former high court judge and general man of opinions, Lord Jonathan Sumption, wrote a challenging piece in <i>The Times</i>, sent to me by a friend. In attaching it I am probably breaching copyright but I could not find any contact address on the internet I've inserted some comments. He may well be right overall. But his prescription stands a good chance of chucking me on the scrapheap.<br />
Maybe that is also right overall.<br />
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<b>Coronavirus lockdown: we are so afraid of death, no one even asks whether this ‘cure’ is actually worse</b></div>
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“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyses needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” The words are Franklin D Roosevelt’s. His challenge was recession, not disease, but his words have a wider resonance.</div>
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Fear is dangerous. It is the enemy of reason. It suppresses balance and judgment. And it is infectious. Roosevelt thought government was doing too little. But today fear is more likely to push governments into doing too much, as democratic politicians run for cover in the face of public panic. Is the coronavirus the latest and most damaging example?</div>
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Epidemics are not new. Bubonic plague, smallpox, cholera, typhoid, meningitis, Spanish flu all took a heavy toll in their time. An earlier generation would not have understood the current hysteria over Covid-19, whose symptoms are milder and whose case mortality is lower than any of these.</div>
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What has changed? For one thing, we have become much more risk-averse. We no longer accept the wheel of fortune. We take security for granted. We do not tolerate avoidable tragedies. Fear stops us thinking about the more remote costs of the measures necessary to avoid them, measures that may pitch us into even greater misfortunes of a different kind.</div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">As someone who (statistically at least) is nearer the bottom on the wheel or fortune than many, I am reluctant to acquiesce to dying conveniently. </span></b></div>
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We have also acquired an irrational horror of death. Today death is the great obscenity, inevitable but somehow unnatural. In the midst of life, our ancestors lived with death, an ever-present fact that they understood and accommodated. They experienced the death of friends and family, young and old, generally at home. Today it is hidden away in hospitals and care homes: out of sight and out of mind, unmentionable until it strikes.</div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I think the idea that death was in effect domesticated in earlier eras is oddly romantic. The Boccaccio account of the bubonic plague that I posted here does not suggest that the ravages of disease were comfortably 'accommodated'. Death was what it always has been. Essentially nasty.</span></b></div>
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We know too little about Covid-19. We do not know its true case mortality because of the uncertainties about the total number infected. We do not know how many of those who have died would have died anyway — possibly a bit later — from other underlying conditions (“comorbidities”, in doctor-speak).</div>
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What is clear is that Covid-19 is not the Black Death. It is dangerous for those with serious existing medical conditions, especially if they are old. For others, the symptoms are mild in the overwhelming majority of cases.</div>
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The prime minister, the health secretary and the Prince of Wales — all of whom have caught it and are fine — represent the normal pattern. The much publicised but extremely rare deaths of fit young people are tragic but they are outliers.</div>
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Yet governments have adopted, with public support, the most extreme and indiscriminate measures.</div>
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We have subjected most of the population, young or old, vulnerable or fit, to house imprisonment for an indefinite period.</div>
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We have set about abolishing human sociability in ways that lead to unimaginable distress.</div>
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We have given the police powers that, even if they respect the limits, will create an authoritarian pattern of life utterly inconsistent with our traditions.</div>
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We have resorted to law, which requires exact definition, and banished common sense, which requires judgment.</div>
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These things represent an interference with our lives and our personal autonomy that is intolerable in a free society. To say that they are necessary for larger social ends, however valuable those ends may be, is to treat human beings as objects, mere instruments of policy.</div>
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And that is before we even get to the economic impact. We have put hundreds of thousands out of a job and into universal credit.</div>
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Recent research suggests that we are already pushing a fifth of small businesses into bankruptcy, many of which will have taken a lifetime of honest toil to build. The proportion is forecast to rise to a third after three months of lockdown.</div>
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Generations to come are being saddled with high levels of public and private debt. These things kill, too. If all this is the price of saving human life, we have to ask whether it is worth paying.</div>
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The truth is that in public policy there are no absolute values, not even the preservation of life. There are only pros and cons. Do we not allow cars, among the most lethal weapons ever devised, although we know for certain that every year thousands will be killed or maimed by them? We do this because we judge that it is a price worth paying to get about in speed and comfort. Every one of us who drives is a tacit party to that Faustian bargain.</div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The inability of people ('society') to understand risk is one of the great anomalies in human behaviour. Does anyone ever educate children about what risk is and how it can be handled? I've been on boards where we have conducted risk assessments. Little was really understood, and the fact that the risks were all neatly tabulated on some sheets of paper seemed to neutralise them, courtesy of a managerial exercise,</span></b></div>
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A similar calculation about the coronavirus might justify a very short period of lockdown and business closures, if it helped the critical care capacity of the NHS to catch up. It may even be that tough social distancing measures would be acceptable as applied only to vulnerable categories.</div>
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But as soon as the scientists start talking about a month or even three or six months, we are entering a realm of sinister fantasy in which the cure has taken over as the biggest threat to our society. Lockdowns are at best only a way of buying time anyway. Viruses don’t just go away. Ultimately, we will emerge from this crisis when we acquire some collective (or “herd”) immunity. That is how epidemics burn themselves out.</div>
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In the absence of a vaccine, it will happen, but only when a sufficient proportion of the population is exposed to the disease.</div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">As someone who is 'vulnerable' by dint of age, I am reluctant gamble on my resistance to further the march of 'herd immunity'. I feel I still have much to do. As always, I think my next book is to be the really good one. I am happy to accept personal restrictions, until such time as the 'absence of a vaccine' is rectified. </span></b></div>
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I am not a scientist. Most of you are not scientists. But we can all read the scientific literature, which is immaculately clear but has obvious limitations. Scientists can help us assess the clinical consequences of different ways to contain the coronavirus. But they are no more qualified than the rest of us to say whether they are worth turning our world upside down and inflicting serious long-term damage. All of us have a responsibility to maintain a sense of proportion, especially when so many are losing theirs.</div>
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<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />Martin Kemphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16855920123652538474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7708911550011574611.post-37678453184642604592020-04-05T11:36:00.000-07:002020-04-05T11:36:29.444-07:00The Black DeathRefreshed by being able to spend some time in the garden. Sorting out ceramic pots on my terrace, with a distant view of Blenheim Park, which will disappear as the trees green over. The Duke stands high on his triumphant column, rigidly unmoved by events. The mere view of buds swelling, fresh bright greens, produces an inner uplift by some kind of organic resonance.<br />
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It seems to me that there is a bizarre kind of privilege in experiencing the current crisis, amongst the biggest to afflict humankind - much to the appreciation of other organisms that are now thriving without the plague of our civilisation. My garden is seething with nature.<br />
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We read of other great cataclysms as historical events, sanitised by distance and by knowing what was to come. This now is the real thing; we are an integral part of it and we have little sense of what is to come, individually and collectively. This will leave a great mark on history, not least because of governments' reaction and the rules they have imposed. What that mark will be seen to be involves such huge unknowns that I cannot really achieve the mental embrace that would make comprehensive sense of it now and what is coming.<br />
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We have it bad, but as a historian, there is a perspective, In the 'Black Death', which ravaged Europe from 1346 onwards, Florence lost 60% of its population. We have the most vivid eyewitness account by the great author, Giovanni Boccaccio. It is contained in his <i>Decameron</i>, in which a privileged group of seven young women and three young men and fled to isolation in a villa outside Florence. They exchanged stories. In current circumstances, Boccaccio's scene setting does not make pleasant reading. But it does put things into dreadful perspective:<br />
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"I<span style="font-family: Times; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">n the year of our Lord 1348, there happened at Florence, the finest city in all Italy, a most terrible plague; which, whether owing to the influence of the planets, or that it was sent from God as a just punishment for our sins, had broken out some years before in the Levant, and after passing from place to place and making incredible havoc all the way, had now reached the west. There, spite of all the means that art and human foresight could suggest, such as keeping the city clear from filth, the exclusion of all suspected persons, and the publication of copious instructions for the preservation of health, and notwithstanding manifold humble supplications offered to God in processions and otherwise, it began to show itself in the spring of the aforesaid year, in a sad and wonderful manner. Unlike what had been seen in the east, where bleeding from the nose is the fatal prognostic, here there appeared certain tumours in the groin or under the arm-pits, some as big as a small apple, others as an egg; and afterwards purple spots in most parts of the body; in some cases large and but few in number, in others smaller and more numerous--both sorts the usual messengers of death. To the cure of this malady neither medical knowledge nor the power of medicines was of any effect; whether because the disease was in its own nature mortal, or that the physicians (the number of whom, taking quacks and women pretenders into the account, was grown very great) could form no just idea of the cause, nor consequently devise a true method of cure; whichever was the reason, few escaped; but nearly all died the third day from the first appearance of the symptoms, some sooner, some later, without any fever or other accessory symptoms. What gave the more virulence to this plague, was that, by being communicated from the sick to the hale, it spread daily, like fire when it comes in contact with large masses of combustibles. Nor was it caught only by conversing with or coming near the sick, but even by touching their clothes, or anything that they had before touched. It is wonderful, what I am going to mention; and had I not seen it with my own eyes, and were there not many witnesses to attest it besides myself, I should never venture to relate it, however worthy it were of belief. Such, I say, was the quality of the pestilential matter, as to pass not only from man to man, but, what is more strange, it has been often known, that anything belonging to the infected, if touched by any other creature, would certainly infect and even kill that creature in a short space of time. One instance of this kind I took particular notice of: the rags of a poor man just dead had been thrown into the street. Two hogs came up, and after rooting amongst the rags and shaking them about in their mouths, in less than an hour they both turned round and died on the spot.</span><br />
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These facts, and others of the like sort, occasioned various fears and devices amongst those who survived, all tending to the same uncharitable and cruel end; which was, to avoid the sick and every thing that had been near them, expecting by that means to save themselves. And some, holding it best to live temperately and to avoid excesses of all kinds, made parties and shut themselves up from the rest of the world; eating and drinking moderately of the best, and diverting themselves with music and such other entertainments as they might have within doors; never listening to anything from without to make them uneasy. Others maintained free living to be a better preservative, and would balk no passion or appetite they wished to gratify, drinking and revelling incessantly from tavern to tavern, or in private houses (which were frequently found deserted by the owners and therefore common to every one), yet strenuously avoiding, with all this brutal indulgence, to come near the infected.</div>
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And such, at that time, was the public distress that the laws, human and divine, were no more regarded; for the officers, to put them in force, being either dead, sick, or in want of persons to assist them, every one did just as he pleased. A third sort of people chose a method between these two: not confining themselves to rules of diet like the former, and yet avoiding the intemperance of the latter; but eating and drinking what their appetites required, they walked everywhere with perfumes and nosegays to smell to, as holding it best to corroborate the brain: for the whole atmosphere seemed to them tainted with the stench of dead bodies, arising partly from the distemper itself, and partly from the fermenting of the medicines within them. Others with less humanity, but perchance, as they supposed, with more security from danger, decided that the only remedy for the pestilence was to avoid it. Persuaded, therefore, of this and taking care for themselves only, men and women in great numbers left the city, their houses, relations, and effects, and fled into the country, as if the wrath of God had been constrained to visit those only within the walls of the city, or else concluding that none ought to stay in a place thus doomed to destruction."</div>
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<br />Martin Kemphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16855920123652538474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7708911550011574611.post-82420284018655490552020-04-02T03:13:00.001-07:002020-04-03T02:38:14.847-07:00Salvator Mundi and Dante (small revsions)If I leave it until the eve., I have run out of steam to blog. A lack of exercise (confinement and very bad back) are not doing me any good.<br />
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At one time, I had over 3000 following my blog. Now it is just in double figures. Perhaps the title of this one will give it a boost.<br />
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I had been sitting on the news that the Louvre had published a book on the Leonardo <i>Salvator Mundi, </i>which made a very fleeting appearance in their bookshop before being hastily withdrawn. The book by Vincent Delieuvin included new technical analysis, and was intended to be ready when the Paris exhibition opened. As we know the painting was not in the show. The odd rogue copy escaped - and compounds the Louvre's embarrassment about a national museum 'promoting' an artwork in private hands. Their book essentially validates what Margaret Dalivalle, Robert Simon and I wrote in our book for Oxford University Press, which the press have essentially buried for some unknown reason. Throughout they made a big mess of the book, particularly visually. Maybe our complaints account for their lack of interest in it. For me, never again with OUP. The press are outsourcing much of the editorial and production stages of books to disastrous effect.<br />
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See the accurate story about the <i>SM</i> in the 'Art Newspaper'<br />
<a href="https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/louvre-concealed-its-secret-salvator-mundi-book?utm_source=The+Art+Newspaper+Newsletters&utm_campaign=97f2e0a6ad-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_03_30_03_55_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c459f924d0-97f2e0a6ad-61136551" style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/louvre-concealed-its-secret-salvator-mundi-book?utm_source=The+Art+Newspaper+Newsletters&utm_campaign=97f2e0a6ad-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_03_30_03_55_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c459f924d0-97f2e0a6ad-61136551</a><br />
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I had been keeping the story for the Oxford and Edinburgh literary festivals (I am banned from Hay, apparently). But we know what has happened to the festivals, sadly.<br />
The ownership is assumed to be Saudi Arabian - but I have seen no hard evidence to that effect.<br />
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Since this is an art-historical blog, I will say a bit about the book I am currently writing (for an as-yet unknown publisher). A this stage, It is called <i>"Let there be Light". Dante and the art of Divine Radiance, </i>for the 700th anniversary in 2021 of the poet's death. A rather long formal outline follows! I have chapter 2 in draft, specifically on Dante's optics and the failure of his sight. This chapter is getting its first scrutiny by the exceptional young scholar of Italian literature, Maria Pavlova of Warwick University, who provided crucial support for the <i>Mona Lisa</i> book.<br />
(Is there, I wonder, a chance of someone pinching the idea? If someone can do it properly according to my [undisclosed] deadline, they are welcome to try.<br />
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<i style="font-family: -webkit-standard;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">"Let there be Light". Dante and the art of Divine Radiance</span></b></i></div>
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Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe are arguably the greatest European writers. They share not only untrammelled imaginative capacity, but also a huge base in learning. For all three (somewhat controversially in the case of Shakespeare) their learning embraced the sciences of their eras. The texts by the three authors also paint compelling visual images. Of this literary trinity, Dante enjoyed the most immediate succession in the visual arts.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times";">Dante’s <i>Vita Nuova</i> (New Life) and <i>Convivio (</i>Banquet), in which he provides commentaries to sets of his own poems, use optical themes in the service of his love for Beatrice. The latter openly demonstrates a good grasp of Mediaeval optics in the visual dialogue between the poet and his beloved lady.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times";">His <i>Divina Commedia</i>, written during the first and second decades of the 14<sup>th</sup> century while in exile from Florence, is without rival in its vision of hellish realities and heavenly glories that lie decisively beyond our accessible experiences. The poet is conducted successively on tours of Hell and Purgatory by the revered Roman poet Virgil, who is a pagan, and finally guided through the spiritual realms of Paradise by his beloved Beatrice, who had in effect been beatified by Dante after her early death in 1290. <i>Hell,</i> the first of the three books, is the most vivid, replete with strikingly varied repertoire of notable sins and picturesque sinners – in keeping with the cliché that the devil has the best tunes. <i>Purgatory </i> follows, a halfway house in which certain sinners who had not adequately repented and were not reconciled to the Church can nevertheless be purified for admission to heaven. It is also peopled by characters with memorable stories to tell. The sublime realm of heavenly <i>Paradise</i> is less varied verbally and visually as Dante and Beatrice ascend though spheres of spiritual wonder. The divine spirits inhabit upper zones radiant with glowing light and infused by sweet sounds. But there are limits to the number of ways in which pure goodness can be characterised. There is only so much variety that can be extracted from virtuous figures clad in white “nighties”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times";">A major running theme in the <i>Divine Comedy</i>, particularly in the <i>Paradiso</i> centres on Dante’s acts of seeing, conducted according to optical rule with respect to the kind of visual experiences that can be accomplished on earth, and the overwhelming of his earthly senses by heavenly light, which does not obey his rules of geometrical optics. This sets an obvious challenge for artists.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times";">Unsurprisingly, <i>Inferno</i> has exercised a special fascination for commentators and illustrators. It has even inspired a popular video game. However, if we approach the visual impact of Dante from another direction – from that of the artists’ stock repertoire of devotional images of Biblical figures, virtuous saints, spiritual events and heavenly realms – emphasis switches to the <i>Paradiso</i> and its dazzling vision of the beauties of heaven. Unsurprisingly, there is a strong affinity between Dante’s vision of the divine realm and the portrayal of heaven in 14<sup>th</sup>-century Italian art, radiant with reflective gilding and golden rays of intense light. This tradition extends from Giotto to Fra Angelico in the 15<sup>th</sup>century. As had been the case in early Christian mosaics, real light reflected from gilded surfaces served to denote the radiant glories of the infinite heavens and the presence of specific rays of non-natural light. Most self-respecting miracles were accompanied by discernible radiance. The use of gold allowed divine light to be clearly differentiated from the standard illumination of objects within the space of the painting. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times";">The problem comes with the switch to consistent naturalism of space, form and light during the 15<sup>th</sup> century. If a highlighted form within a picture uses the brightest tones of which paint is capable, how is divine light to be characterised? Internally consistent naturalism excludes recourse to actual gold. Alberti in <i>On Painting</i> (1435-6) insists that the painter should not use actual gold in depicting a golden object but exhibit high skill in using paint to imitate the lustre of gold. The notably ingenious solutions used by major artists to differentiate natural and divine light provide the focus of the latter part the book. The artists include Piero della Francesca, Bellini, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Titian, Bernini and Pietro da Cortona and Baciccio. Raphael emerges as the knowing hero of the enterprise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times";">The book opens with a broad look at the massive role of light in religious traditions, as expressed in the Bible by the separation light from darkness in the opening verses of <i>Genesis</i> (from which the title of the book comes). Light became the subject of intense scientific exploration in the Middle Ages in Islam and Christianity. The mathematical precision of direct light, reflection and refraction was taken as a decisive sign of the glorious perfection of God’s design. Optics combined rationality and rapture. Dante was deeply interested in this optical tradition, which lies behind a number of his accounts light in the <i>Paradiso</i>. The science of optics provides our earthly explanation of heavenly effects that lie ultimately outside our finite understanding. The final breakdown of the poet’s sense of sight in the face of the most sublime of heavenly visions is characterised in terms of Mediaeval optics. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times";">A chapter will be devoted to how illustrators of the <i>Paradiso</i> grappled with divine light. The artists range from the glorious Giovanni di Paolo in the Renaissance to the visionary William Blake and the intense Gustav Doré in the 19<sup>th</sup>century. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times";">The blinding of Dante sets the tone for the artists’ portrayal of unseeable brightness. When Saul falls from his horse in Michelangelo’s Vatican fresco, the hand with which he shields his eyes casts no shadow. Divine light does not obey earthly rule. Raphael shows himself in a series of paintings to be the greatest master of spiritual radiance. Correggio works his radiant magic in his dome illusions. When Baciccio evokes the glories of the name of Jesus in the huge vault of the Jesuit Church in Rome he does so with an ineffable light that explodes from the IHS logo though encircling clusters of glowing angels, whose pink bodies are bleached by the extreme luminosity of the light source. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times";">Perhaps the largest and most conspicuous portrayals of the radiant heavens were the massive theatrical spectaculars that were staged to mark major religious festivals and great dynastic occasions. Typically the stage sets involved massive dome-like constructions within which the planets orbited. These visual and musical extravaganzas came to be known as <i>Paradisi</i>. There are scant visual records of them, but some written descriptions survive and allow us to understand how they related to the portrayal of heaven in paintings and played a major role in realising the Dantesque vision.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times";">The Dantesque quality of these and other visions of divine light are not demonstrably in each instance attributable to a direct attempt to emulate Dante in the <i>Paradiso</i>, but they are part of the diaspora of Dante’s vision. For some artists, their knowledge of Dante is likely to have played a direct role, not least for Raphael and Michelangelo. There is also the impact of Dante’s sources, most notably St. Augustine. We also need to take into account the influence of Dante on how other writers summon up visionary experiences. And there were artists who gleaned the Dantesque vision from preceding artworks. Like the penetrative light that Dante describes in the <i>Paradiso</i>, his dazzling vision diffused on a ubiquitous basis, in a way that lies beyond the pedantic questions of direct influence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times";"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Behind all this is an enormous and enduring question. If God exists in a realm ultimately beyond the limits of our understanding and the data of science, how can we ever truly know God? This question is as pressing and insoluble in today’s physics and cosmology as it was in the Middle Ages, when the doctrine of the “double truth” was developed to embrace the philosophy of Aristotle within the framework of Christian doctrine. The stakes behind by Dante’s vision of Paradise could not be more momentous.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />Martin Kemphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16855920123652538474noreply@blogger.com0