The LION & the CARDINAL

ADVENT HIATUS

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 20:11:15 -0600

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

Tue, 2 Dec 2008 15:22:23 -0600

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

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:12:49 -0600

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

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 22:25:05 -0600

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

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:16:29 -0600

In Hohenschwangau

In Neuschwanstein

CORBELS ~ WATTS MEMORIAL CHAPEL in COMPTON, SURREY

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 22:27:36 -0600

An EXTRAORDINARY STYLE of BUILDING

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 00:01:00 -0600

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

Thu, 4 Dec 2008 23:26:06 -0600

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

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 12:41:39 -0600

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

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:01:00 -0600

The iconoclastic riot of the Calvinists of Copenhagen in 1530.