Today, I am told, is Raphael's birthday. But all the rumpus online is about a man called Hasan Niyazi. He was an admirer of the work of Raphael, a serious student of his painting and life, who loved above all the Madonna of the Goldfinch and had an ambitious project to put all available Raphael scholarship online: a work of great beauty and importance - a work he called a three-pipe problem. He hoped to live long enough to see it through - he didn't. He died from a crisis related to epilepsy in October last year. His passion and determination clearly inspired and awed many friends online and elsewhere. It is not that he knew so much about Raphael; it is more that the beauty of the paintings was a healing to his broken heart and a hope to is fretful mind. He desperately wanted to hand on this legacy, improved and accessible. For some reason, I pick on Longfellow's Hiawatha (Picture-Writing): Nor forgotten was the Love-Song, The most subtle of all medicines, the most potent spell of magic, Dangerous more than war or hunting; Thus the Love-Song was recorded, Symbol and interpretation. First a human figure standing, Painted in the brightest scarlet; 'Tis the lover, the musician, And the meaning is, "My painting makes me powerful over others." Then the figure seated, singing, Playing on a drum of magic, And the interpretation, "Listen! 'Tis my voice you hear, my singing!" Then the same red figure seated In the shelter of a wigwam, And the meaning of the symbol, "I will come and sit beside you In the mystery of my passion!" I guess that grasping the symbols is the best way to praise this life.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
April 2024
Categories
|