[meteorite-list] Martin, explanation please.

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2009 21:43:10 -0500
Message-ID: <7626D02041914A0E9696687DC778FE5C_at_ATARIENGINE2>

Hi,

    This is hardly about meteorites, but... While
the medieval artists probably worked in relative
ignorance of the true appearances of ancient
times, that becomes less and less true as time
goes by. Van Leyden certainly knew his perfect
little Northern European city is not what Sodom
looked like, not how boats were, not bridges, etc.

    It was not the purpose of the 16th, 17th, 18th
century artists to depict true classical or Biblical
history. They wanted to picture the life around
them as it was, and Bible stories and Greek and
Roman myths were just an excuse to have a cover
story (and to get a rich church or monastery to
buy the painting).

    Medieval and Renaissance Rome, for example,
still contained a vast sample of the ancient world's
appearance; it was after all, the biggest city ever
built up to that point in time and bigger than any
other city yet built. But that's not what artists were
interested in doing.

    It was not until the 19th century when suddenly
the true appearance of ancient times, foreign lands,
and other cultures became a theme for European
artists. So the painting that bothers Carl so much:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Leyden-Lot.png
is just a 16th century Dutch guy having a party
with a couple of girls while cosmic disaster strikes
all around him. It's like a bad movie (The Night of the
Comet or Armageddon) where people do the same
thing. How to get the respectable and churchy to pay
for it? It's.. ahh... it's Lot... Yeah, and the destruction
of Sodom! Yeah, that's the ticket. Wow! Lookit them
fireballs!


Sterling K. Webb
----------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "Darren Garrison" <cynapse at charter.net>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Friday, July 17, 2009 10:03 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Martin, explanation please.


> On Fri, 17 Jul 2009 18:52:33 -0700, you wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>The more I think of this painting the less I'm liking it. Why?
>>If I remember some of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah,
>>Lot's wife turned around, viewed the destroyed city and then
>>turned into a piller. This painting shows the bombardment
>>and at the same Lot's daughters are already underway in
>>getting their father drunk. This means they started this
>>before the bombardment. Lot's wife wasn't even dead
>>yet because they haven't started to leave the city.
>
> Not even close to the only problems with the painting-- such as the
> clothing and
> the technology show is contemporary to the time of the artist who
> painted it, no
> to the period being painted. The clothes are wrong, the bridge is
> wrong, the
> ships are wrong (and that's just from my memory of seeing it a day or
> two ago).
>
> Of course, the same is true of most other art of the period.
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Received on Fri 17 Jul 2009 10:43:10 PM PDT