Saintly Sunday... or not.

I got up today, with the sole intention of writing a blog all about St. Valentine, only to read on Wikipedia how depressingly uninteresting he is. Or, they are. There are actually 14 st. Valentines, all martyrs who died in Roman times for their "valor" which is what Valentine means. So really, they were a bunch of dudes who no one actually knew their name, and thought they were full of valor, so they called them Valentine.

So interesting.

But, there is always Cupid.

Cupid is the son of Venus and her lover Mars. Venus's husband was actually Vulcan who was deformed and lived in a Volcano, and Venus was rather... self centered and she didn't like that much, but she got along with Mars great, because he was powerful and attractive.

Anyways someone fathered Cupid. And, Cupid was a big trouble maker from the start. He was always making Zeus and Apollo fall in love with people, and they hated him for it, until Cupid fell in love himself...

The story begins with Apollo sleeping with a chick, probably because Cupid made him do it... and they had a beautiful daughter psyche. And she was the Venus on earth, and Venus didn't like that. She got really upset, so she told Cupid to make her fall in love with a beast.

Well, Cupid took pity on her and was like, awe... and didn't make her fall in love with a beast, and instead vowed to marry her.

Psyche's parents (her real ones, not Apollo) heard a rumor that she was going to marry a beast, and so they freaked out and told her to go hang out on the top of a cliff:

And so, Cupid sent a Zephyr to get her, and bring her to his house where she was attended on by mysterious invisible servants and only saw him at night.

Her sisters came and visited her and told her she should look at Cupid, even though he told her not to, to see if he was really and icky monster. And Psyche believed her sisters, because she was scared he was really a monster, and no girl really wants to sleep with a monster.

And so she lit a lamp one night, woke him up with the hot oil, and poked herself with his arrow all in the same moment. And he was like, "Shit Psyche, I told you not to. Now we can never be together. Mother was right."

So he runs away to mommy, and Psyche searches the world for him, asking different gods, until finally she goes to Venus and has to undertake these three ridiculous tasks in which Ants, gods, and cupid himself took pity on her and helped her.

And finally Cupid comes to her and says he loves her to, and begs Zeus to let him marry her in a godly fashion. And Zeus is like, Pha, you make me deal with all of these women and fall in love with them, than I guess its time for you to be miserable. And Venus was like "NOOOOOO! I will not have my son marry a mortal!"
And Zeus said "Ha! I will make her a god then!"

And everyone was happy in the end.

And thus is the story of Cupid and Psyche (Illustrated by a Cassone panel by the Master of the Argonauts).

Oh, And Psyche's sisters through themselves off the cliff thinking that Cupid would marry them instead. They died.

Da Vinci before Da Vinci

Now, don't get me wrong. Leonardo Da Vinci was awesome! And since he never learned Greek or Latin, he didn't just read stuff and believe it, like most people did in the Renaissance. (I mean, Renaissance should mean people finally getting around to read 2000 year old books.)

But, he wasn't the first to do alot of things.

For one thing, he wasn't the first Italian to work with Oils. Sure he was probably the first to slap it on a wall above a laundry facility (ie Last Super), but plenty of artists, including Botticelli, and everyone up in Venice had discovered oils. Not to mention the north was full of it. They loved the beautiful layering and volumetric forms you can get outta oil. Tempera, that fuzzy stuff? Thats one of the things the Italians tried to hold on forever, but... it was like death. For one, you can't mix the colors on whatever your painting, so you need tiny little strokes of paint... Yuck. Painstaking blah.

Anyway, He wasn't the first jack of all trades either. The artist Francisco di Giorgio did everything! He developed crazy hilltop fortresses, and all kinds of weapon defenses for castles using geometry and math.

And he built this beautiful church! Can anyone say Brunileschi??? Its also so sparse almost Palladian!

And! He did some painting, which was alright.

Isn't that architecture sweet? Reminiscent of the downfall of Roman pagan society as a result of Christianity??? OH YEAH!

And he did sculpture! Look at the raw emotion in this relief!!! Nothing like Da Vinci's shit.

And the anatomy is pretty nice too. Why? Because, FRANCISCO DI GIORGIO WAS THE FIRST GUY TO DRAW THE ViTRUVIAN MAN!!!! Oh, you thought Vitruvian man was a thing thought up by Da Vinci, nope. First, the perfect man is described by this Roman guy Vitruvious (same guy described the founding of Rome, Etruscan Architecture, and fun stuff like that...), Then Di Giorgio was like, HEY i can do that, so he did:

And this, believe it or not, was in a notebook that he GAVE to Leonardo da Vinci!!!! So Leo was like, WHOA hes onto something!!!! And did the Vitruvian man we know today.

And that looks nice. :)

Oh, And you think Ford invented the car, nope. Di Giorgio!

Jack of all trades. His only failing was probably that he liked money, and he lived in Siena, and he didn't really care about painting that much. Which happens. Painting is definetly not the best enterprise for the Renaissance man. Its not a good living. When Da Vinci moves in with the Duke of Milan he gives him a list of all his special skills, and painting was the last of ten. And he said something along the lines of, "if you really want me to, I'll paint you, but I won't promise anything".

Di Giorgio did alot of cool stuff, and he shared it with his contemporaries, they probably had a pretty good meeting of the minds. Especially since da Vinci was designing the weapons, and di Giorgio was designing the defense, so it probably worked out for them both.

Note: Its not that I hate the big three. Da Vinci is awesome, he did some crazy pants stuff, but HE isn't the Renaissance. There are plenty of other characters running around too. If you wanna get all conspiracy crazed, go ahead.  But, they weren't the only people around, and they weren't the only people patrons hired, or artists studied, or who ran workshops (Rafael was the only one to run a huge workshop, Leo moved around alot, and Michelangelo wanted to be alone...). And in reality, da Vinci and Michelangelo between them created a body of work the size of my thumb nail compared to other artists, albeit there works are singularly wonderful, and they were some of the most well known artists around the world today, but it wasn't always like that.

They used to be obscure artists too, known by only a handful of works and what Vasari chose to write about them. Who knows, maybe back then, di Giorgio was more popular, because people would spend more on a hilltop fortress than a turret cannon that fires at a 360 angle.

Michelangelo long before Michelangelo

I have to credit most of the knowledge in this post to my Italian Ren professor, Dr. Medicus, who lectured on Federighi yesterday with some very brilliant ideas.

First I must begin with an introduction to Italy, c. 1500. They thought that the millennium and a half, meant the end of days, and that the anti Christ walked the earth. And he might've, the Borgia was the pope at the time... And the only good thing he ever did was get rid of Savanerola.... (A character for another day)

Anyway, They thought the world was going to end, artists like Botticelli were going nutzoid, and people were depicting hell, and all its little places, recently talked about by Dante. What a joyous time to live in! And we think of this was the high point of the Renaissance... Phooy.

So, there was this artist named Luca Signorelli, and he painted lots of naked dudes, and naked dudes that might have been girls if you had never seen a girl before:

And this wasn't normal. Generally Renaissance art doesn't have a bunch of nakedness. And if it does, it gets covered up like Michelangelo last judgement, where everybody used to be naked, but no longer is.

But, does this look familiar? Yes, Michelangelo loved naked dudes, and he painted lots of them, and quite a few of them look like these ones...

And we continue to Federighi. He was a sculptor that did all kinds of stuff that no one looks at. Like this bench, with its two arms that are reclining naked figures.

Which kinda reminds everyone of this:

And this:

Which reminds people of this, even though its a man... but Michelangelo didn't know much about the differences in male and female anatomy...

And then, Federigh did this. Which is crazy pants.

I mean come on, there are dragons eating turtles heads, thats awesome! But the important thing is the figures, which look alot like this: 

Michelangelo's bound slave. 

These are all aspects of michelangelo that we art historians think are THE SHIT. But, they weren't thought up by Michelangelo. He obviously saw these other things, and was like WHOA! ME LIKE! And, so he recreated them on a bigger and better scale, like GIGANTIC. 

So, when people talk about the big three. Michelangelo, Da Vinci, and Rafael, you've gotta remember that they weren't the first to do these things, they were inspired, and before 1500 when the big three get going, there was a lot of crazy awesome shit going down all over Italy, and in the North too! 

:D Tomorrow, I'll tell you why Da Vinci is only half as awesome as you think he is. Ventruvian man, Shmroovian Man.

Nastagio degli Onesti

The story of Nastagio degli Onesti is a fictional tale written by Boccaccio in the 1300s and was painted by Botticelli in the late 1400s to commemorate the second (and hastely planned) marriage of Gionnozzo Pucci and Lucretza Bini.

The story goes as such, Nastagio was a bachelor. A rich bachelor because his father and uncle both died and left him everything. So he naturally, was a play boy. He fell in love with an ice queen, who refused all of his advances. He gave her lots of gifts, attention, and love, but she still refused him.

Eventually his friends told him he should go on vacation, so he took his passe and they went on a vacation, but they didn't get very far, only just outside the city. He set up tents, and they had all kinds of fun doing everything they could think of to do. And got into all kinds of trouble.

One day he got sick of everybody and went out for a walk on his own, and this is where Botticelli picks up the story.

EEK GAD! THERESE A NAKED WOMAN BEING CHASED BY A DOG!

Nastagio falls upon the terrible scene of the knight chasing his beloved.

The knight was also spured by his beloved. He loved her dearly and when she refused him, he killed himself with the same sword he holds in his hands. Because she laughed at his sorrow and reveled in his mystery even after his death, she is doomed to be chased, and he is doomed to chase her every day in the different places where they went to be lovers.

Now, instead of doing fun things like spin the bottle, they do this:

He chases her with his dogs and then spears her in the back. He then rips out her cold hard heart, and feeds it to her dogs. Then she gets up and starts running away from him again. Wonderful circle huh?

Well Nastagio is like AH HA! PERFECT! That'll show her.

So he plans a wonderful banquet out in the forest, which was the thing to do to get away from city life and its problems.

And well, this happens:

Quite the disterbance huh? Well yeah.

And Nastagio gets what he wants. The woman who has been so cold to him is so affected she says that she will do whatever he wants. Including the hokie pokie aparently.

But, Nastagio is a good person, and he says he will preserve her honor and marry her instead.

So they get married:

And this sad little reception is the feast! It represents a very typical Italian wedding feast. The girls on one side, the old men on the other. But, it lacks all the happiness of a wedding. The bride obviously feels that Nastagio tricked her into it, but she doesn't have a choice, she is stuck because she doesn't want to end up like the couple in the forest.

While it seems like this is just BIZZAR! But, it does have a moral message.

There are lots of ice queens who think they are too good to get married, or get married to just any guy who dates them. The moral is a reminder that you need to do your duty to society, and to your family to have lots of babies. Being a spinster is not an option, unless you wanna run naked through forests for the rest of eternity.

There also is a bigger picture moral for both characters. The marriage symbolizes an end to the wastefulness of unmarried life. The money and time they both spent woeing and being woed is over, and now they can enjoy a peacefull settled life of a married couple.

A third interpretation is that the fourth scene, the feast scene, represents the opulence of the golden age of Florence, as well as the two families who commissioned the piece, place in society. The Pucci (family of the groom) was a new money kind of family, and the Bini (family of the Bride) was old money, ish. And they were both friends of the most powerful Lorenzo Magnificent.

This piece by such a popular artist definitely would have solidified the Pucci as members of high society. Anyone who saw it would've notice the portraits of members of political importance within the paintings. The pieces act as a sort of political propaganda.

Isn't this what you want to see on your wedding night?