Wednesday, June 9, 2010

The Ancients on Daring to Depict St. Michael the Archangel

This painting of St. Michael the Archangel by Vaclav Vaca hangs at the back of the nave of St. Michael's Cathedral.  N.B. this is not from the mural at the Lady altar by the same artist.


Thou hast little Latin and less Greek?  Not to worry, it happens.  Read it in translation here: Palatine Anthology 33.



2 comments:

  1. There goes our nobody again; with these little tidbits of wisdom in both word and picture!

    Each time I log on here, it's another little surprise...like a box of Cracker Jack or for those who don't remember Cracker Jack, "like a box of chocolates."

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  2. They still have Cracker Jack; except that it doesn't come in boxes anymore, but in crackly plastic pockets, as do most potato chips.

    Sometimes in math, you find what you really need in order to get on with things is just to designate a symbol that will stand for the thing you want, and then it's easier to talk about --- the story behind the mysterious "imaginary" i is something like that; so while there's nothing special about the letter "i" that says "I square to a negative", it's become a common feature of our iconography, in mathematics at least.

    Sometimes, in contemplation, you find you really want to look at a face, a scene, a setting...

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