Tuesday, July 8, 2008
"Cloaked Egyptians"
8:36pm
Cloaked Official
Middle Kingdom, early Dynasty 13, ca. 1759-1675 B.C.
Red quartzite, provenance not known
Brooklyn Museum 62. 77.1 Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund
"The Twelfth and early Thirteenth Dynasties comprised one of the most creative artistic epochs in Egyptian history. Artists introducted many new sculptural forms - some that continued for centuries and others that were soon abandoned.
"One of the period's most dramatic and long-lasting innovations was the cloaked statue. The cloak symbolized the god Osiris, whose corpse was wrapped tightly in bandages and who was eventually reborn to everlasting life. Individuals shown with their bodies shrouded in a thick mantle thus expressed the wish to be reborn following their own physical deaths."
I've got a bone to pick with that info author. Couldn't the cloak merely have expressed the way the person liked to wrap up when it was cold? And why would those dressed for summer heat have wished any less for that reincarnation?
The Met museum has a Middle Kingdom cloaked man, seen near a less warmly dressed man:
Statuette of a Cloaked Man
Mid-Dynasty 12 (ca.1850 B.C.) or later
Fine-grained limestone
Gift of J. Lionberger Davis, 1966 (MMA 66.123.1)
Meanwhile, the cloak does indeed appear again later. Here's a cozy looking fellow from the Eighteenth dynasty:
Ahmose, also known as Ruru
Schist, New Kingdom, joint reign of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III, ca. 1478-1458 B.C.
Provenance not known
Brooklyn Museum 61.196, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund
(from the info card)
Let's have a close up of their faces:
"Middle Kingdom style influence Eighteenth Dynasty royal and nonroyal sculpture and relief until the middle of the dynasty. This seated figure represents a man named Ahmose, who the inscription reveals was commonly known as Ruru. The artist depicted Ahmose in a wig and a cloak derived from Middle Kingdom prototypes. The short chin beard, wide eyes, and strongly arched brown, however, reflect the style of his own time."
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
"Voltaire and Life of the Mind"
6:24am
I pulled up the image in Photoshop and had a closer look:
Voltaire with a Perruque
marble, 1778
Jean-Antoine Houdon
French, (March 20, 1741 – July 15, 1828)
Widener Collection
Voltaire (1694-1778) - pseudonym of François-Marie Arouet: "French writer, satirist, the embodiment of the 18th-century Enlightenment. Voltaire is remembered as a crusader against tyranny and bigotry." (Source)
I gathered up several of his quotes, about the life of the mind and liberty.
"Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too."
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
"Liberty of thought is the life of the soul."
"We only half live when we only half think."
"Man is free at the instant he wants to be."
"What we find in books is like the fire in our hearths. We fetch it from our neighbor's, we kindle it at home, we communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all."
"Paradise is where I am."
What a virtue, to have such an evolved consciousness, that owing to its strength, anywhere we roam is paradise!
Essay on Tolerance
(from Essay on Epic Poetry, 1727)
(Source)
(Source)
Source Brutus, act II, scene I (1730)
"Il en est des livres comme du feu de nos foyers; on va prendre ce feu chez son voisin, on l’allume chez soi, on le communique à d’autres, et il appartient à tous."
"Lettre XII: sur M. Pope et quelques autres poètes fameux," Lettres philosophiques' (1733)
"Le paradis terrestre est où je suis."
Le Mondain (1736)
(Source)
