ADVENT HIATUS

I will resume posting at this web log come Christmastide.

Please explore my artwork and other supported websites.

Please also consider buying Christmas cards with my designs on them; I have a limited number still available, at a cost of $40 (plus shipping) for fifty 4" x 5" cards and envelopes. This is the design I am offering this year:



I am also offering giclee prints of certain of my drawings. These will be made by a printer in Chicago who specializes in fine art reproductions on heavy rag paper. They will be in limited-editions of twenty, each print signed and numbered.


Capture of the Unicorn ~ Allegory of the Incarnation
13.5" x 10.5"
Printed on 16" x 12" paper
$340 each


Tree of Life and Death
5.25" x 7"
Printed on 8" x 10" paper
$90 each


Butterfly
9" x 5.5"
Printed on 10" x 8" paper
$120 each

Please e-mail me if you are interested.

Please note that the prices above do not include shipping costs; I have many international customers, so I do not charge flat shipping rates. And as always, I am accepting commissions for original drawings.

Also, for those who have not yet heard, Michelle and I are expecting our first child in May. Please keep us in your prayers.

FIGURATIVE ALPHABETS

This first figurative alphabet is from a late 14th century pattern book for illustrators. It was a creation of the architect Giovannino de'Grassi. Click on the images below for larger pictures (courtesy of Giornale Nuovo).











A similar figurative alphabet was engraved by the Master E.S. made around 1465. Later owners of some of the prints misidentified them as the work of Martin Schongauer and added his M + S monogram to them.









A German article, Kupferstichalphabet des Meisters E.S. nueste illustrierte welt-chronik für 1499 by Baurat Wilhelm Bühler, published in Studien zur Deutschen Kunstgeschichte in 1934, contains the complete set of prints, and identifies certain elements of each letterform as things whose names begin with that letter:

Angriff, Abwehr, Lehrs
Beize, Lehrs
Coronierung d. Cäcilia
Joannes d. Däufer (Täufer), Donator
Eintracht
Folgsam
Gauch, Gol
Haushalt
Jagd
Köhler, Kreigswerber
Linkshänder
Mädchenheim
Nötigung, Neckerei
Obmacht, Ohnmacht
Papagei
Habsburg in der Quere zur Schweiz
Rana (Frosch), Ratte
Schlecken
Trachen (Drachen)
(St. Christoph) Ufer, Vogel, Wasser
Xylophon (Handglocken)
St. Yürgen mit Angel
Züngeln

BEURONESE ART



Side chapel in the Abbey of Beuron, ornamented in the eponymous Beuronese Style, a flawed but fascinating attempt of the late 19th and early 20th centuries to revive hieratic iconography in Roman Catholicism.

Rev. Kenneth Novak:

The most significant principle of the Beuronese school was the role of geometry in determining proportions. During his time in Rome with the Nazarenes, Desiderius Lenz became fascinated with Egyptian art which was now available to be studied after Napoleon had brought back many pieces from there. Lenz thought sacred art should reflect the natural laws of aesthetics through formulae he believed were forgotten after the Greeks and Egyptians. Geometrical proportions determine ideal forms, and the result is an innate harmony comparable to the mathematical relationships in musical composition. This is why the relationship between Beuronese art and the simultaneous revival of the pure music of Gregorian chant was so compelling for Lenz and others. One of the elements of the strongest variation of Beuronese art is a distinct Egyptian reminiscence. Other general principles of the style include:

* The art speaks to the mind of the viewer. The art is itself worshipful and invites the viewer to worship. It does not stand out boldly of itself but is part of an environment of worship.

* Works are anonymous, done by group effort, and not for the glory of the artist, but of God.

* As in icons, the Beuronese style favors imitation over originality, with freehand copying revealing an artist's true genius.

* There is full integration of art and architecture. Painting and sculpture are not "stick-ons" to an architectural plan but an integral part of it. Beuronese art encompasses painting, architecture, altar vessels, and furnishings.

Lenz and Wuger thought of forming a monastic community of artists. They believed that in order to make sacred art one should lead a Catholic life in community. In 1868 in Rome, they met Maurus Wolter, who had similar artistic aspirations for his young Benedictine monastery at Beuron. He wanted his monastery to play a role in the revival of Church art just as it was beginning to do in the revival of Gregorian chant (in emulation of Solesmes). Lenz was attracted to Beuron because of the abbey's use of Gregorian chant, which he saw as parallel to his own efforts in art and architecture. Gabriel Wuger entered Beuron in 1870, followed by Lukas Steiner and Desiderius Lenz in 1872.

KUBLAI KHAN



Kublai Khan:

How do you wish me to make myself a Christian? You see [Nestorian] Christians in these parts are so ignorant that they do nothing and have no power; you see these idolators do what ever they please, and when I am sitting at tables the cups which are in the middle of the hall come to me full of wine or drinks of other things, without anyone touching them, and I drink with them. They compel the bad weather to go any direction they please and do many wonderful things. And as you know their idols speak and tell them all that they want.

But if I am converted to the faith of Christ and make myself a Christian, then my barons and other people who are not attached to the faith of Christ would say: What reason has moved you to baptism and to hold the faith of Christ? And these idolators say that what they do they do it by the holiness and power of the idols. Then I should not know what to answer them; and these idolators who do such things with their arts and knowledge could easily make me die.

But you shall go down to your High Priest [the Pope] and shall pray him on our behalf to send me a hundred men skilled in your religion who before these idolators may be able to reprove what they do and may say to them that they know and can do such things but will not, because they are done by diabolical art and through evil spirits, and may so restrain them that they may not have power to do such things in their presence. Then when we shall see this we shall consider them and their religion; and so I shall be baptized, and when I shall be baptized, all my barons and great men will be baptized, and then their subjects will receive baptism, and there will be more Christians here than there are in your parts.

CHAPELS in BAVARIAN ROYAL CASTLES


In Hohenschwangau


In Neuschwanstein

CORBELS ~ WATTS MEMORIAL CHAPEL in COMPTON, SURREY

An EXTRAORDINARY STYLE of BUILDING



Sir William Chambers:

To those usually called Gothic Architects we are indebted for the first considerable Improvements in construction; there is a lightness in their works, an art and boldness of execution, to which the ancients never arrived, and which the moderns comprehend and imitate with difficulty. England contains many magnificent examples of this Species of Architecture, equally admirable for the art with which they are built, the taste and ingenuity with which they are composed. One cannot refrain from wishing that the Gothic Structures were more considered, were better understood, and in higher estimation than they hitherto seem to have been. Would our Dilettanti, instead of importing the Gleanings of Greece, or our Antiquarians, instead of publishing loose incoherent prints, encourage persons duly qualified to undertake a correct elegant publication of our Cathedrals, and other Buildings called Gothic, before they totally fall to ruin, it would be a real service to the Arts of Design; preserve the remembrance of an extraordinary Style of Building, now sinking fast into Oblivion; and at the same time publish to the world, the riches of Britain in the Splendour of her ancient Structures.

[Treatise on the Decorative Parts of Civil Architecture by Sir William Chambers. 1759]

The MEZZOTINTS of PRINCE RUPERT of the RHINE



The Great Executioner (of St. John the Baptist)
Mezzotint by Prince Rupert of the Rhine, after the painting by Jose Ribera

Malcolm C. Salaman:

There is a story, long beleieved of Prince Rupert, that one day he saw a soldier cleaning the barrell of his musket, which the dew had rusted during a lengthy spell of sentry-go in the night. The prince, according to the legend, noticed that, as the soldier scraped away the fine grain eaten into the metal by the damp, which was in effect the rust, a sort of nondescript design was left, and from that he was supposed to have conceived the idea of mezzotint engraving. It was a plausible story, but its truth has been discounted, since Horace Walpole related it, by the discovery that the art was invented, not by Charles I's famous nephew, but by a German soldier of more modest fame.

Yet mezzotint engraving has its romantic story. When Prince Rupert was in Brussels in 1654, he sought the acquaintence of a certain Colonel Ludwig Von Siegen - but it was not to talk of military matters. Perhaps he was trying to forget the stricken fields of Marston Moor and Naseby, the surrendered battlements of Bristol, in the peaceful arts and sciences which now engaged his subdued activities. Among these engraving enjoyed his particular favour and interest; and his wonder and curiosity had been aroused by the report of certain extraordinary prints mysteriously produced from copper-plates which yet revealed no tough of graver or etching-point...

The secret of his invention, however, Colonel Von Siegen had kept to himself for twelve years, and in the interval, he had worked during his leisure hours at its development; but the flattering interest evinced by Prince Rupert, when he curiously and admiringly examined the prints, overcame the reticence of the gallant and ingenious inventor. He confided his secret to the sympathetic prince. He told him how, by means of a steel roller with fine sharp teeth cut on the face of it, fixed to a horizontal handle, he had worked over and over a copper-plate, in every possible direction, until the surface presented a close and even burr of grain, which, when inked, had given an impression of practically uniform black. Then, with a sharp tool, which he had devised for the purpose, he had gradually scraped away portions of the burr to varying depths and degrees, while other portions were left untouched, so that the high-lights, middle tints, and black shadows of his design resulted from impressions taken from the worked plate, and a whole picture was accordingly presented merely by gradatory tones of light and shade, and without a single line or dot, as in the known forms of engraving.

[The Old Engravers of England by Malcolm C. Salaman]

PRESENTATION of MARY



The Golden Legend:

And then when she had accomplished the time of three years, and had left sucking, they brough her to the temple with offerings. And there was about the temple, after the fifteen psalms of degrees, fifteen steps or grees to ascend up to the temple, because the temple was high set. And no body might go to the altar of sacrifices that was without, but by the degrees. And then our Lady was set on the lowest step, and mounted up without any help as she had been of perfect age, and when they had performed their offering, they left their daughter in the temple with the other virgins, and they returned into their place. And the Virgin Mary profited every day in all holiness, and was visited daily of angels, and had every day divine visions.

BEELDENSTORM



The iconoclastic riot of the Calvinists of Copenhagen in 1530.

The ARRANGEMENT and PUBLISHING of the BIBLE



Christopher De Hamel:

The arrangement and publishing of the Bible was the most enduring monument of the scribes and illuminators of Paris in the early 13th century. This deserves some attention. It has a major place in the history of manuscripts. The way that the Latin Bible was redesigned and promoted from the Paris schools was one of the most phenomenal successes in the history of book production. The Bible is not an easy book to publish: a very diverse collection of ancient historical and literary texts sanctioned by divine authority and forming a vast and complex record of the Word of God. Of course, the Bible has been central to Christianity from the beginning...

But (with a very few distinguished exceptions) Bible manuscripts had been made up of several separate volumes, usually enormous in size, which were intended as vast monuments to be displayed on a lectern or altar in a church or in the refectory of the monastery... These volumes were not portable in the usual sense, and they were not designed for private study. 12th century students of the Bible text (and naturally there were many) would make use of those twenty or so distinct volumes which made up a glossed Bible. One studied the Psalms, or the Gospels, or the Minor Prophets, for example. Biblical scholars were known as Masters of the Sacred Page, a term which echoes this concept of the biblical corpus as the sum of a great many pages of Holy Writ rather than as a single book within two covers.

Some time in Paris in the late 12th or early 13th century all this began to change. This is really significant. The Bible was now put into a single volume. The order and names of the biblical books were standardized, the prologues ascribed to St. Jerome were inserted systematically, and the text was checked for accuracy as far as possible. For the first time the text was meticulously divided up into numbered chapters which are still in use today. The so-called Interpretation of Hebrew Names, an alphabetical dictionary of the Latin meanings of Hebrew proper names, was added at the end. More important in the history of publishing are the changes to the physical appearance of the book. Scribes used the thinnest silky vellum. The pages became extremely small. They employed headings at the top of each page, little red and blue initials throughout the text to mark the beginning of each chapter, and the text was now written in black ink in a microscopic script in two columns. The effect was dramatic. The new type of Bible was an absolute bestseller...

More than that, the Bible design masterminded in the early 13th century has so fundamentally entered the subconsciousness of all of us that, even now, 700 years later, Bibles still look the same. Choose a traditional printed Bible from a good bookshop today. Look at its physical layout. It is on tissue-thin paper, very like the uterine vellum of the 13th century. It is probably octavo in size, like almost every 13th century copy. It has the same order of biblical books, headings, the same division into chapters (with verses, not introduced until the 16th century) and - many centuries after this layout has been dropped from most other text - it is in minute writing in two narrow columns. Look at the binding and the colored edges. The chances are that the cover will look like leather and be black or red or blue: these are the three colors of 13th century Parisian painting. It is hardly possible to find another object which was so new in 1200 and which is still made with so little modification today.

[A History of Illuminated Manuscripts by Christopher De Hamel. Phaidon: London, 1994]

QUIA ERGO FEMINA



St. Hildegard of Bingen:

Quia ergo femina mortem instruxit
Clara Virga illam interemit.
Et ideo est summa benedictio
In feminea forma
Pre omni creatura,
Quia Deus factus est homo
In dulcissima et beata Virgine.

As a woman hath brought death,
A pure Virgin hath conquered it.
And therefore the highest blessing
Is upon the female form
Before all creatures,
Because God became man
Within the sweetest and beautiful Virgin.

This antiphon was sung at our wedding, at the bride's prayer before Mary's altar.

The CHRISTIAN LABYRINTH


Chartres Labyrinth

Adrian Fisher:

Another great labyrinth style is the Mediæval Christian labyrinth with eleven rings of paths, which double back on each of the four axes to portray a distinctive Christian cross. These first appeared in manuscripts, followed by a number of examples in the indoor stone pavements of the great mediæval abbeys and cathedrals of the twelfth to sixteenth centuries. The oldest surviving labyrinth, built in the early 1200s, can be found at Chartres Cathedral in France. Those at Amiens Cathedral, Bayeux Cathedral, Saint-Quentin parish church and the church of San Vitale in Ravenna still survive; others in the French cathedrals of Arras, Chambéry, Poitiers, Rheims and Sens no longer exist.

[The Amazing Book of Mazes by Adrian Fisher. New York: Abrams, 2006]


Amiens Labyrinth

The FIGURATIVE MAZES of FRANCESCO SEGALA



Adrian Fisher:

The idea of using a maze to portray an image was first suggested in the sixteenth century by the Paduan architect Francesco Segala, who created woodcut images in maze form in his book Libro de Laberinti de Franc. Segalla Padoano Scultore et Architettore, a copy of which can be found in the Vatican Library. His maze images included a man, horseman, jester, dog, dolphin, snail, crab, and sailing ship; implied by its title, the book probably contains many more images. He used the internal lines of each maze to reinforce its image in an illustrative way. There is no record of any of these ever being created in the landscape; their intricate designs would have involved path lengths of over a mile, too large for formal gardens.

[The Amazing Book of Mazes by Adrian Fisher. New York: Abrams, 2006]

COSMONAUT ORTHODOXY



The Orthodox Encyclopædia:

Father Alexiy Uminskiy: Good morning! We all remember the words allegedly said by Yuriy Gagarin: I went up to the outer space and didn't find any God there. Many years have passed. Does this axiom still work for the modern space explorers?

Valeriy Korzun: I know another phrase, also said by Gagarin: If you haven't met God on Earth you won't meet Him in outer space. This phrase is much closer to my heart. A lot has changed: every crew gets a priest's blessing before the launch now.

Father Alexiy Uminskiy: Is there a church in Zvyozdny Gorodok?

Yuriy Lonchakov: Yes, there is, it was built three years ago.

Father Alexiy Uminskiy: Is there a specific saint cosmonauts pray to before the launch? Do you have a heavenly patron?

Valeriy Korzun: Not as such, but we have always considered St. Nicholas the Wonderworker our patron, because he takes care of all travellers.

Father Alexiy Uminskiy: Do you take icons along to space?

Yuriy Lonchakov: Yes, we take small ones along. I always have an icon of St. George the Victorybearer, because my name is Yuriy, it's a variation of George.

Father Alexiy Uminskiy: I have recently been very surprised to learn that a church has been built in Baikonur. Do you know after whom it is consecrated and what services it holds?

Valeriy Korzun: I haven't heard that it's already been built, but I know there is an Orthodox community there, and they used to meet just in a room, and their priests came to bless us before the launch.

Father Alexiy Uminskiy: Many people now consecrate their homes and cars, ships are consecrated, I even consecrated a theatre. Are rockets consecrated?

Yuriy Lonchakov: I don't know about rockets, but before the crew puts the space suits on, a priest is always invited to consecrate them.

Valeriy Korzun: And the bus that takes them to the launch pad. We don't know about the rockets because we don't deal with them, but they say they do get consecrated.

Father Alexiy Uminskiy: This must be wonderful - to fly all around the Earth on a consecrated space ship!

KHLUDOV PSALTER



A page from the Khludov Psalter, illuminated in 9th century Byzantium. In the miniatures, an iconoclast whitewashes a holy picture with a sponge; he is compared to Stephaton offering the crucified Lord vinegar to drink.

SAINTS from a MEDIAEVAL BOOK of HOURS


St. Michael


St. John the Baptist


Ss. Peter and Paul


St. John the Beloved


St. James the Greater


St. Lawrence


St. Sebastian


St. Nicholas


St. Anthony


St. Anne


St. Mary Magdalen


St. Catherine of Alexandria


St. Margaret of Antioch


St. Genevieve


St. Barbara


St. Roch

MASTERPIECES of MASONRY



A.W.N. Pugin:

A pointed church is the masterpiece of masonry. It is essentially a stone building; its pillars, its arches, its vaults, its intricate intersections, its ramified tracery, are all peculiar to stone, and could not be consistently executed in any other material. Moreover, the ancient masons obtained great altitude and great extent with a surprising economy of wall and substance; the wonderful strength and solidity of their buildings are the result not of the quantity or size of the stones employed, but of the art of their disposition. To exhibit the great excellence of these constructions, it will be here necessary to draw a comparison between them and those of the far-famed classic shores of Greece.

Grecian architecture is essentially wooden in its construction; it originated in wooden buildings, and never did its professors possess either sufficient imagination or skill to conceive any departure from the original type. Vitruvius shews that their buildings were formerly composed of trunks of trees, with lintels or brestsummers laid across the top, and rafters again resting on them. This is at once the most ancient and barbarous mode of building that can be imagined; it is heavy, and, as I before said, essentially wooden; but is it not extraordinary that when the Greeks commenced building in stone, the properties of this material did not suggest to them some different and improved mode of construction? Such, however, was not the case; they set up stone pillars as they had set up trunks of wood; they laid stone lintels as they had laid wood ones, flat across; they even made the construction appear still more similar to wood, by carving triglyphs, which are merely a representation of the beam ends. The finest temple of the Greeks is constructed on the same principle as a large wooden cabin. As illustrations of history they are extremely valuable; but as for their being held up as the standard of architectural excellence, and the types from which our present buildings are to be formed, it is a monstrous absurdity, which has originated in the blind admiration of modern times for every thing Pagan, to the prejudice and overthrow of Christian art and propriety.

[The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture by A.W.N. Pugin. 1841]

The TRUE PURPOSE of ANATOMY

And this is the true purpose of anatomy: that the observer through the elaborate construction of the body shall be brought to comprehend the dignity of the soul and consequently through the wonders of the body and the soul shall learn to know and to love the Creator.

-- Blessed Nicholas Steno, lecture at the opening of the anatomical theater in Copenhagen, 1673







Images taken from Historical Anatomies on the Web, one of my very favorite websites.

GREAT CLOCKS of CHRISTENDOM, PART XXII

On the Black Church of Brasov:







In Copenhagen:



See also parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, *, *, *, *