Chitra, also spelled as Citra, is an Indian genre of art that includes painting, sketch and any art form of delineation. The earliest mention of the term Chitra in the context of painting or picture is found in some of the ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism and Pali texts of Buddhism

 

NOMENCLATURE

Chitra (IAST: Citra, चित्र) is a Sanskrit word that appears in the Vedic texts such as hymns 1.71.1 and 6.65.2 of the Rigveda. There, and other texts such as Vajasaneyi Samhita, Taittiriya Samhita, Satapatha Brahmana and Tandya Brahmana, Chitra means "excellent, clear, bright, colored, anything brightly colored that strikes the eye, brilliantly ornamented, extraordinary that evokes wonder". In the Mahabharata and the Harivamsa, it means "picture, sktech, dilineation", and is presented as a genre of kala (arts). Many texts generally dated to the post-4th-century BCE period, use the term Chitra in the sense of painting, and Chitrakara as a painter. For example, the Sanskrit grammarian Panini in verse 3.2.21 of his Astadhyayi highlights the word chitrakara in this sense. Halls and public spaces to display paintings are called chitrasalas, and the earliest known mention of these are found in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

 

A few Indian regional texts such as Kasyapa silpa refer to painting by others words. For example, abhasa – which literally means "semblance, shining forth", is used in Kasyapa-shilpa to mean as a broader category of painting, of which chitra is one of three types. The verses in section 4.4 of the Kasyapa-silpa state that there are three types of images – those which are immovable (walls, floor, terracota, stucco), movable, and those which are both movable-immovable (stone, wood, gems).[5] In each of these three, states Kasyapa-shipa, are three classes of expression – ardhacitra, citra, and citra-abhasa. Ardhacitra is an art form where a high relief is combined with painting and parts of the body is not seen (it appears to be emerging out of the canvas). The Citra is the form of picture artwork where the whole is represented with or without integrating a relief. Citrabhasha is the form where an image is represented on a canvas or wall with colors (painting). However, states Commaraswamy, the word Abhasa has other meanings depending on the context. For example, in Hindu texts on philosophy, it implies the "field of objective experience" in the sense of the intellectual image internalized by a person during a reading of a subject (such as an epic, tale or fiction), or one during a meditative spiritual experience.

 

In some Buddhist and Hindu texts on methods to prepare a manuscript (palm leaf) or a composition on a cloth, the terms lekhya and alekhya are also used in the context of a chitra. More specifically, alekhya is the space left while writing a manuscript leaf or cloth, where the artist aims to add a picture or painting to illustrate the text.

 

HISTORY

The earliest explicit reference to painting in an Indian text is found in verse 4.2 of the Maitri Upanishad where it uses the phrase citrabhittir or "like a painted wall". The Indian art of painting is also mention in a number of Buddhist Pali suttas, but with the modified spelling of Citta. This term is found in the context of either a painting, or painter, or painted-hall (citta-gara) in Majjhima Nikaya 1.127, Samyutta Nikaya 2.101 and 3.152, Vinaya 4.289 and others. Among the Jain texts, it is mentioned in Book 2 of the Acaranga Sutra as it explains that Jaina monk should not indulge in the pleasures of watching a painting.

 

The Kamasutra, broadly accepted to have been complete by about the 4th-century CE, recommends that the young man should surprise the girl he courts with gifts of color boxes and painted scrolls. The Viddhasalabhanjika – another Hindu kama- and kavya–text uses chitra-simile in verse 1.16, as "pictures painted by the god of love, with the brush of the mind and the canvas of the heart".

 

The nature of a chitra (painting), how the viewer's mind projects a two dimensional artwork into a three dimensional representation, is used by Asanga in Mahayana Sutralamkara – a 3rd to 5th-century Sanskrit text of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, to explain "non-existent imagination" as follows:

 

Just as in a picture painted according to rules, there are neither projections nor depressions and yet we see it in three dimensions, so in the non-existent imagination there is no phenomenal differentiation, and yet we behold it.

— Mahayana Sutralamkara 13.7, Translated in French by Sylvain Levi

 

According to Yoko Taniguchi and Michiyo Mori, the art of painting the caves at the c. 6th-century Buddhas of Bamiyan site in Afghanistan, destroyed by the Taliban Muslims in the late 1990s, were likely introduced to this region from India along with the literature on early Buddhism.

 

TEXTS

There are many important dedicated Indian treatises on chitra. Some of these are chapters within a larger encyclopedia-like text. These include:

 

Chitrasutras, chapters 35–43 within the Hindu text Vishnudharmottara Purana (the standard, and oft referred to text in the Indian tradition)

Chitralaksana of Nagnajit (a classic on classical painting, 5th-century CE or earlier making it the oldest known text on Indian painting; but the Sanskrit version has been lost, only version available is in Tibet and it states that it is a translation of a Sanskrit text)

Samarangana Sutradhara (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Aparajitaprccha (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Manasollasa (an encyclopedia, contains chapters on paintings)

Abhilashitartha chinatamani

Sivatatva ratnakara

Chitra Kaladruma

Silpa ratna

Narada silpa

Sarasvati silpa

Prajapati silpa

Kasyapa silpa

 

These and other texts on chitra not only discuss the theory and practice of painting, some of them include discussions on how to become a painter, the diversity and the impact of a chitra on viewers, of aesthetics, how the art of painting relates to other arts (kala), methods of preparing the canvas or wall, methods and recipes to make color pigments. For example, the 10th-century Chitra Kaladruma presents recipe for making red color paint from the resin of lac insects. Other colors for the historic frescoes found in India, such as those in the Ajanta Caves, were obtained from nature. They mention earthy and mineral (inorganic) colorants such as yellow and red ochre, orpigment, green celadonite and ultramarine blue (lapis lazuli). The use of organic colorants prepared per a recipe in these texts have been confirmed through residue analysis and modern chromatographic techniques.

 

THEORY

The Indian concepts of painting are described in a range of texts called the shilpa shastras. These typically begin by attributing this art to divine sources such as Vishvakarma and ancient rishis (sages) such as Narayana and Nagnajit, weaving some mythology, highlighting chitra as a means to express ideas and beauty along with other universal aspects, then proceed to discuss the theory and practice of painting, sketching and other related arts. Manuscripts of many these texts are found in India, while some are known to be lost but are found outside India such as in Tibet and Nepal. Among these are the Citrasutras in the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana manuscripts discovered in India, and the Citralaksana manuscript discovered in Tibet (lost in India). This theory include early Indian ideas on how to prepare a canvas or substrate, measurement, proportion, stance, color, shade, projection, the painting's interaction with light, the viewer, how to captivate the mind, and other ideas.

 

According to the historic Indian tradition, a successful and impactful painting and painter requires a knowledge of the subject – either mythology or real life, as well as a keen sense of observation and knowledge of nature, human behavior, dance, music, song and other arts. For example, section 3.2 of Visnudharmottara Purana discusses these requirements and the contextual knowledge needed in chitra and the artist who produces it. The Chitrasutras in the Vishnudharmottara Purana state that the sculpture and painting arts are related, with the phrase "as in Natya, so in Citra". This relationship links them in rasa (aesthetics) and as forms of expression.

 

THE PAINTING

A chitra is a form of expression and communication. According to Aparajitaprccha – a 12th-century text on arts and architecture, just like the water reflects the moon, a chitra reflects the world. It is a rupa (form) of how the painter sees or what the painter wants the viewer to observe or feel or experience.

 

A good painting is one that is alive, breathing, draws in and affects the viewer. It captivates the minds of viewers, despite their diversity. Installed in a sala (hall or room), it enlivens the space.

 

The ornaments of a painting are its lines, shading, decoration and colors, states the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana. It states that there are eight gunas (merits, features) of a chitra that the artist must focus on: posture; proportion; the use of the plumb line; charm; detail (how much and where); verisimilitude; kshaya (loss, foreshortening) and; vrddhi (gain). Among the dosas (demerits, faults) of a painting and related arts, states Chitrasutra, are lines that are weak or thick, absence of variety, errors in scale (oversized eyes, lips, cheeks), inconsistency across the canvas, deviations from the rules of proportion, improper posture or sentiment, and non-merging of colors.

 

LIMBS OF THE PAINTING

Two historical sets called "chitra anga", or "limbs of painting" are found in Indian texts. According to the Samarangana Sutradhara – an 11th-century Sanskrit text on Hindu architecture and arts, a painting has eight limbs:

 

Vartika – manufacture of brushes

Bhumibandhana – preparation of base, plaster, canvas

Rekhakarma – sketching

Varnakarma – coloring

Vartanakarma – shading

lekhakarana – outlining

Dvikakarma – second and final lining

Lepyakarma – final coating

 

According to Yashodhara's Jayamangala, a Sanskrit commentary on Kamasutra, there are sadanga (six limbs)[note 5] in the art of alekhyam and chitra (drawing and painting):

 

Rupa-bhedah, or form distinction; this requires a knowledge of characteristic marks, diversity, manifested forms that distinguish states of something in the same genus/class

Pramanani, or measure; requires knowledge of measurement and proportion rules (talamana)

Bhava yojanam, or emotion and its joining with other parts of the painting; requires understanding and representing the mood of the subject

Lavanya yojanam, or rasa, charm; requires understanding and representing the inner qualities of the subject

Sadrsyam, or resemblance; requires knowledge of visual correspondence across the canvas

Varnika-bhanga or color-pigment-analysis; requires knowledge how colors distribute on the canvas and how they visually impact the viewer.

 

These six limbs are arranged stylistically in two ways. First as a set of compound (Rupa-bhedah and Varnika-bhanda), a set of joining (middle two yojnam), and a set of single words (Pramanani and Sadrsyam). Second, states Victor Mair, the six limbs in this Hindu text are paired in a set of differentiation skills (first two), then a pair of aesthetic skills, and finally a pair of technical skills. These limbs parallel the 12th-century Six principles of Chinese painting of Xie He. {refn|group=note|The Hua Chi of Teng Ch'un, a 12th-century Chinese text, mentions the Buddhist temple of Nalanda with frescoes about the Buddha painted inside. It states that the Indian Buddhas look different from those painted by Chinese, as the Indian paintings have Buddha with larger eyes, their ears are curiously stretched and the Buddhas have their right shoulder bare. It then states that the artists first make a drawing of the picture, then paint a vermilion or gold colored base. It also mentions the use of ox-glue and a gum produced from peach trees and willow juice, with the artists preferring the latter. According to Coomaraswamy, the ox-glue in the Indian context mentioned in the Chinese text is probably the same as the recipe found in the Sanskrit text Silparatna, one where the base medium is produced from boiling buffalo skin in milk, followed by drying and blending process.

 

The six limbs in Jayamangala likely reflect the earliest and more established Hindu tradition for chitra. This is supported by the Chitrasutras found in the Vishnudharmottara Purana. They explicitly mention pramanani and lavanya as key elements of a painting, as well as discuss the other four of the six limbs in other sutras. The Chitrasutra chapters are likely from about the 4th or 5th-century. Numerous other Indian texts touch upon the elements or aspects of a chitra. For example, the Aparajitaprccha states that the essential elements of a painting are: citrabhumi (background), the rekha (lines, sketch), the varna (color), the vartana (shading), the bhusana (decoration) and the rasa (aesthetic experience).

 

THE PAINTER

The painter (chitrakara, rupakara) must master the fundamentals of measurement and proportions, state the historic chitra texts of India. According to these historic texts, the expert painter masters the skills in measurement, characteristics of subjects, attributes, form, relative proportion, ornament and beauty, states Isabella Nardi – a scholar known for her studies on chitra text and traditions of India. According to the Chitrasutras, a skilled painter needs practice, and is one who is able to paint neck, hands, feet, ears of living beings without ornamentation, as well as paint water waves, flames, smoke, and garments as they get affected by the speed of wind. He paints all types of scenes, ranging from dharma, artha and kama. A painter observes, then remembers, repeating this process till his memory has all the details he needs to paint, states Silparatna. According to Sivatattva Ratnakara, he is well versed in sketching, astute with measurements, skilled in outlining (hastalekha), competent with colors, and ready to diligently mix and combine colors to create his chitra. The painter is a creative person, with an inner sense of rasa (aesthetics).

 

THE VIEWER

The painter should consider the diversity of viewers, states the Indian tradition of chitra. The experts and critics with much experience with paintings study the lines, shading and aesthetics, the uninitiated visitors and children enjoy the vibrancy of colors, while women tend to be attracted to the ornamentation of form and the emotions. A successful painter tends to captivate a variety of minds. A painter should remember that the visual and aesthetic impact of a painting triggers different responses in different audiences.

 

The Silparatna – a Sanskrit text on the arts, states that the painting should reflect its intended place and purpose. A theme suitable for a palace or gateway is different from that in a temple or the walls of a home. Scenes of wars, misery, death and suffering are not suitable paintings within homes, but these can be important in a chitrasala (museum with paintings). Auspicious paintings with beautiful colors such as those that cheer and enliven a room are better for homes, states Silparatna.

 

PRACITICE

According to the art historian Percy Brown, the painting tradition in India is ancient and the persuasive evidence are the oldest known murals at the Jogimara caves. The mention of chitra and related terms in the pre-Buddhist Vedic era texts, the chitra tradition is much older. It is very likely, states Brown, the pre-Buddhist structures had paintings in them. However, the primary building material in ancient India was wood, the colors were organic materials and natural pigments, which when combined with the tropical weather in India would naturally cause the painting to fade, damage and degrade over the centuries. It is not surprising, therefore, that sample paintings and historic evidence for chitra practice are unusual. The few notable surviving examples of chitra are found hidden in caves, where they would be naturally preserved a bit better, longer and would be somewhat protected from the destructive effects of wind, dust, water and biological processes.

Some notable, major surviving examples of historic paintings include:

 

Murals at Jogimara cave (eight panels of murals, with a Brahmi inscription, 2nd or 1st century BCE, Hindu), oldest known ceiling paintings in India in remote Ramgarh hills of northern Chhattisgarh, below on wall of this cave is a Brahmi inscription in Magadhi language about a girl named Devadasi and a boy named Devadina (either they were lovers and wrote a love-graffiti per one translation, or they were partners who together converted natural caves here into a theatre with painted walls per another translation)

 

Mural at Sitabhinji Group of Rock Shelters (c. 400 CE Ravanachhaya mural with an inscription, near a Shiva temple in remote Odisha, a non-religious painting), the oldest surviving example of a tempera painting in eastern states of India

 

Murals at Ajanta caves (Jataka tales, Buddhist), 5th-century CE, Maharashtra

Murals at Badami Cave Temples (Hindu), 6th-century CE, Karnataka (secular paintings along with one of the earliest known painting of a Hindu legend about Shiva and Parvati inside a Vaishnava cave)

Murals at Bagh caves (Hallisalasya dance, Buddhist or Hindu), Madhya Pradesh

Murals at Ellora caves (Flying vidyadharas, Jain), Maharashtra

Frescoes at Sittanavasal cave (Nature scenes likely representing places of Tirthankara sermons, Jain), Tamil Nadu

Frescoes at Thirunadhikkara cave temple (Flowers and a woman, likely a scene of puja offering to Ganesha, another of Vishnu, Hindu), Travancore region, Kerala-Tamil Nadu

Paintings at the Brihadisvara temple (Dancer, Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Manuscript paintings (numerous states such as Gujarat, Kashmir, Kerala, Odisha, Assam; also Nepal, Tibet; Buddhist, Jain, Hindu

Vijayanagara temples (Hindu), Karnataka

Chidambaram temple (Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Chitrachavadi (Hindu, a choultry–mandapa near Madurai with Ramayana frescoes)

Pahari paintings (Hindu), Himachal Pradesh and nearby regions

Rajput paintings (Hindu), Rajasthan

Deccan paintings (Hindu, Jain)

Kerala paintings (Hindu)

Telangana paintings (Hindu)

Mughal paintings (Indo-Islamic)

 

CONTEMPORARY CULTURE

Kalamkari (Hindu)

Pattas (Jain, Hindu)

 

WIKIPEDIA

Chitra, also spelled as Citra, is an Indian genre of art that includes painting, sketch and any art form of delineation. The earliest mention of the term Chitra in the context of painting or picture is found in some of the ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism and Pali texts of Buddhism

 

NOMENCLATURE

Chitra (IAST: Citra, चित्र) is a Sanskrit word that appears in the Vedic texts such as hymns 1.71.1 and 6.65.2 of the Rigveda. There, and other texts such as Vajasaneyi Samhita, Taittiriya Samhita, Satapatha Brahmana and Tandya Brahmana, Chitra means "excellent, clear, bright, colored, anything brightly colored that strikes the eye, brilliantly ornamented, extraordinary that evokes wonder". In the Mahabharata and the Harivamsa, it means "picture, sktech, dilineation", and is presented as a genre of kala (arts). Many texts generally dated to the post-4th-century BCE period, use the term Chitra in the sense of painting, and Chitrakara as a painter. For example, the Sanskrit grammarian Panini in verse 3.2.21 of his Astadhyayi highlights the word chitrakara in this sense. Halls and public spaces to display paintings are called chitrasalas, and the earliest known mention of these are found in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

 

A few Indian regional texts such as Kasyapa silpa refer to painting by others words. For example, abhasa – which literally means "semblance, shining forth", is used in Kasyapa-shilpa to mean as a broader category of painting, of which chitra is one of three types. The verses in section 4.4 of the Kasyapa-silpa state that there are three types of images – those which are immovable (walls, floor, terracota, stucco), movable, and those which are both movable-immovable (stone, wood, gems).[5] In each of these three, states Kasyapa-shipa, are three classes of expression – ardhacitra, citra, and citra-abhasa. Ardhacitra is an art form where a high relief is combined with painting and parts of the body is not seen (it appears to be emerging out of the canvas). The Citra is the form of picture artwork where the whole is represented with or without integrating a relief. Citrabhasha is the form where an image is represented on a canvas or wall with colors (painting). However, states Commaraswamy, the word Abhasa has other meanings depending on the context. For example, in Hindu texts on philosophy, it implies the "field of objective experience" in the sense of the intellectual image internalized by a person during a reading of a subject (such as an epic, tale or fiction), or one during a meditative spiritual experience.

 

In some Buddhist and Hindu texts on methods to prepare a manuscript (palm leaf) or a composition on a cloth, the terms lekhya and alekhya are also used in the context of a chitra. More specifically, alekhya is the space left while writing a manuscript leaf or cloth, where the artist aims to add a picture or painting to illustrate the text.

 

HISTORY

The earliest explicit reference to painting in an Indian text is found in verse 4.2 of the Maitri Upanishad where it uses the phrase citrabhittir or "like a painted wall". The Indian art of painting is also mention in a number of Buddhist Pali suttas, but with the modified spelling of Citta. This term is found in the context of either a painting, or painter, or painted-hall (citta-gara) in Majjhima Nikaya 1.127, Samyutta Nikaya 2.101 and 3.152, Vinaya 4.289 and others. Among the Jain texts, it is mentioned in Book 2 of the Acaranga Sutra as it explains that Jaina monk should not indulge in the pleasures of watching a painting.

 

The Kamasutra, broadly accepted to have been complete by about the 4th-century CE, recommends that the young man should surprise the girl he courts with gifts of color boxes and painted scrolls. The Viddhasalabhanjika – another Hindu kama- and kavya–text uses chitra-simile in verse 1.16, as "pictures painted by the god of love, with the brush of the mind and the canvas of the heart".

 

The nature of a chitra (painting), how the viewer's mind projects a two dimensional artwork into a three dimensional representation, is used by Asanga in Mahayana Sutralamkara – a 3rd to 5th-century Sanskrit text of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, to explain "non-existent imagination" as follows:

 

Just as in a picture painted according to rules, there are neither projections nor depressions and yet we see it in three dimensions, so in the non-existent imagination there is no phenomenal differentiation, and yet we behold it.

— Mahayana Sutralamkara 13.7, Translated in French by Sylvain Levi

 

According to Yoko Taniguchi and Michiyo Mori, the art of painting the caves at the c. 6th-century Buddhas of Bamiyan site in Afghanistan, destroyed by the Taliban Muslims in the late 1990s, were likely introduced to this region from India along with the literature on early Buddhism.

 

TEXTS

There are many important dedicated Indian treatises on chitra. Some of these are chapters within a larger encyclopedia-like text. These include:

 

Chitrasutras, chapters 35–43 within the Hindu text Vishnudharmottara Purana (the standard, and oft referred to text in the Indian tradition)

Chitralaksana of Nagnajit (a classic on classical painting, 5th-century CE or earlier making it the oldest known text on Indian painting; but the Sanskrit version has been lost, only version available is in Tibet and it states that it is a translation of a Sanskrit text)

Samarangana Sutradhara (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Aparajitaprccha (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Manasollasa (an encyclopedia, contains chapters on paintings)

Abhilashitartha chinatamani

Sivatatva ratnakara

Chitra Kaladruma

Silpa ratna

Narada silpa

Sarasvati silpa

Prajapati silpa

Kasyapa silpa

 

These and other texts on chitra not only discuss the theory and practice of painting, some of them include discussions on how to become a painter, the diversity and the impact of a chitra on viewers, of aesthetics, how the art of painting relates to other arts (kala), methods of preparing the canvas or wall, methods and recipes to make color pigments. For example, the 10th-century Chitra Kaladruma presents recipe for making red color paint from the resin of lac insects. Other colors for the historic frescoes found in India, such as those in the Ajanta Caves, were obtained from nature. They mention earthy and mineral (inorganic) colorants such as yellow and red ochre, orpigment, green celadonite and ultramarine blue (lapis lazuli). The use of organic colorants prepared per a recipe in these texts have been confirmed through residue analysis and modern chromatographic techniques.

 

THEORY

The Indian concepts of painting are described in a range of texts called the shilpa shastras. These typically begin by attributing this art to divine sources such as Vishvakarma and ancient rishis (sages) such as Narayana and Nagnajit, weaving some mythology, highlighting chitra as a means to express ideas and beauty along with other universal aspects, then proceed to discuss the theory and practice of painting, sketching and other related arts. Manuscripts of many these texts are found in India, while some are known to be lost but are found outside India such as in Tibet and Nepal. Among these are the Citrasutras in the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana manuscripts discovered in India, and the Citralaksana manuscript discovered in Tibet (lost in India). This theory include early Indian ideas on how to prepare a canvas or substrate, measurement, proportion, stance, color, shade, projection, the painting's interaction with light, the viewer, how to captivate the mind, and other ideas.

 

According to the historic Indian tradition, a successful and impactful painting and painter requires a knowledge of the subject – either mythology or real life, as well as a keen sense of observation and knowledge of nature, human behavior, dance, music, song and other arts. For example, section 3.2 of Visnudharmottara Purana discusses these requirements and the contextual knowledge needed in chitra and the artist who produces it. The Chitrasutras in the Vishnudharmottara Purana state that the sculpture and painting arts are related, with the phrase "as in Natya, so in Citra". This relationship links them in rasa (aesthetics) and as forms of expression.

 

THE PAINTING

A chitra is a form of expression and communication. According to Aparajitaprccha – a 12th-century text on arts and architecture, just like the water reflects the moon, a chitra reflects the world. It is a rupa (form) of how the painter sees or what the painter wants the viewer to observe or feel or experience.

 

A good painting is one that is alive, breathing, draws in and affects the viewer. It captivates the minds of viewers, despite their diversity. Installed in a sala (hall or room), it enlivens the space.

 

The ornaments of a painting are its lines, shading, decoration and colors, states the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana. It states that there are eight gunas (merits, features) of a chitra that the artist must focus on: posture; proportion; the use of the plumb line; charm; detail (how much and where); verisimilitude; kshaya (loss, foreshortening) and; vrddhi (gain). Among the dosas (demerits, faults) of a painting and related arts, states Chitrasutra, are lines that are weak or thick, absence of variety, errors in scale (oversized eyes, lips, cheeks), inconsistency across the canvas, deviations from the rules of proportion, improper posture or sentiment, and non-merging of colors.

 

LIMBS OF THE PAINTING

Two historical sets called "chitra anga", or "limbs of painting" are found in Indian texts. According to the Samarangana Sutradhara – an 11th-century Sanskrit text on Hindu architecture and arts, a painting has eight limbs:

 

Vartika – manufacture of brushes

Bhumibandhana – preparation of base, plaster, canvas

Rekhakarma – sketching

Varnakarma – coloring

Vartanakarma – shading

lekhakarana – outlining

Dvikakarma – second and final lining

Lepyakarma – final coating

 

According to Yashodhara's Jayamangala, a Sanskrit commentary on Kamasutra, there are sadanga (six limbs)[note 5] in the art of alekhyam and chitra (drawing and painting):

 

Rupa-bhedah, or form distinction; this requires a knowledge of characteristic marks, diversity, manifested forms that distinguish states of something in the same genus/class

Pramanani, or measure; requires knowledge of measurement and proportion rules (talamana)

Bhava yojanam, or emotion and its joining with other parts of the painting; requires understanding and representing the mood of the subject

Lavanya yojanam, or rasa, charm; requires understanding and representing the inner qualities of the subject

Sadrsyam, or resemblance; requires knowledge of visual correspondence across the canvas

Varnika-bhanga or color-pigment-analysis; requires knowledge how colors distribute on the canvas and how they visually impact the viewer.

 

These six limbs are arranged stylistically in two ways. First as a set of compound (Rupa-bhedah and Varnika-bhanda), a set of joining (middle two yojnam), and a set of single words (Pramanani and Sadrsyam). Second, states Victor Mair, the six limbs in this Hindu text are paired in a set of differentiation skills (first two), then a pair of aesthetic skills, and finally a pair of technical skills. These limbs parallel the 12th-century Six principles of Chinese painting of Xie He. {refn|group=note|The Hua Chi of Teng Ch'un, a 12th-century Chinese text, mentions the Buddhist temple of Nalanda with frescoes about the Buddha painted inside. It states that the Indian Buddhas look different from those painted by Chinese, as the Indian paintings have Buddha with larger eyes, their ears are curiously stretched and the Buddhas have their right shoulder bare. It then states that the artists first make a drawing of the picture, then paint a vermilion or gold colored base. It also mentions the use of ox-glue and a gum produced from peach trees and willow juice, with the artists preferring the latter. According to Coomaraswamy, the ox-glue in the Indian context mentioned in the Chinese text is probably the same as the recipe found in the Sanskrit text Silparatna, one where the base medium is produced from boiling buffalo skin in milk, followed by drying and blending process.

 

The six limbs in Jayamangala likely reflect the earliest and more established Hindu tradition for chitra. This is supported by the Chitrasutras found in the Vishnudharmottara Purana. They explicitly mention pramanani and lavanya as key elements of a painting, as well as discuss the other four of the six limbs in other sutras. The Chitrasutra chapters are likely from about the 4th or 5th-century. Numerous other Indian texts touch upon the elements or aspects of a chitra. For example, the Aparajitaprccha states that the essential elements of a painting are: citrabhumi (background), the rekha (lines, sketch), the varna (color), the vartana (shading), the bhusana (decoration) and the rasa (aesthetic experience).

 

THE PAINTER

The painter (chitrakara, rupakara) must master the fundamentals of measurement and proportions, state the historic chitra texts of India. According to these historic texts, the expert painter masters the skills in measurement, characteristics of subjects, attributes, form, relative proportion, ornament and beauty, states Isabella Nardi – a scholar known for her studies on chitra text and traditions of India. According to the Chitrasutras, a skilled painter needs practice, and is one who is able to paint neck, hands, feet, ears of living beings without ornamentation, as well as paint water waves, flames, smoke, and garments as they get affected by the speed of wind. He paints all types of scenes, ranging from dharma, artha and kama. A painter observes, then remembers, repeating this process till his memory has all the details he needs to paint, states Silparatna. According to Sivatattva Ratnakara, he is well versed in sketching, astute with measurements, skilled in outlining (hastalekha), competent with colors, and ready to diligently mix and combine colors to create his chitra. The painter is a creative person, with an inner sense of rasa (aesthetics).

 

THE VIEWER

The painter should consider the diversity of viewers, states the Indian tradition of chitra. The experts and critics with much experience with paintings study the lines, shading and aesthetics, the uninitiated visitors and children enjoy the vibrancy of colors, while women tend to be attracted to the ornamentation of form and the emotions. A successful painter tends to captivate a variety of minds. A painter should remember that the visual and aesthetic impact of a painting triggers different responses in different audiences.

 

The Silparatna – a Sanskrit text on the arts, states that the painting should reflect its intended place and purpose. A theme suitable for a palace or gateway is different from that in a temple or the walls of a home. Scenes of wars, misery, death and suffering are not suitable paintings within homes, but these can be important in a chitrasala (museum with paintings). Auspicious paintings with beautiful colors such as those that cheer and enliven a room are better for homes, states Silparatna.

 

PRACITICE

According to the art historian Percy Brown, the painting tradition in India is ancient and the persuasive evidence are the oldest known murals at the Jogimara caves. The mention of chitra and related terms in the pre-Buddhist Vedic era texts, the chitra tradition is much older. It is very likely, states Brown, the pre-Buddhist structures had paintings in them. However, the primary building material in ancient India was wood, the colors were organic materials and natural pigments, which when combined with the tropical weather in India would naturally cause the painting to fade, damage and degrade over the centuries. It is not surprising, therefore, that sample paintings and historic evidence for chitra practice are unusual. The few notable surviving examples of chitra are found hidden in caves, where they would be naturally preserved a bit better, longer and would be somewhat protected from the destructive effects of wind, dust, water and biological processes.

Some notable, major surviving examples of historic paintings include:

 

Murals at Jogimara cave (eight panels of murals, with a Brahmi inscription, 2nd or 1st century BCE, Hindu), oldest known ceiling paintings in India in remote Ramgarh hills of northern Chhattisgarh, below on wall of this cave is a Brahmi inscription in Magadhi language about a girl named Devadasi and a boy named Devadina (either they were lovers and wrote a love-graffiti per one translation, or they were partners who together converted natural caves here into a theatre with painted walls per another translation)

 

Mural at Sitabhinji Group of Rock Shelters (c. 400 CE Ravanachhaya mural with an inscription, near a Shiva temple in remote Odisha, a non-religious painting), the oldest surviving example of a tempera painting in eastern states of India

 

Murals at Ajanta caves (Jataka tales, Buddhist), 5th-century CE, Maharashtra

Murals at Badami Cave Temples (Hindu), 6th-century CE, Karnataka (secular paintings along with one of the earliest known painting of a Hindu legend about Shiva and Parvati inside a Vaishnava cave)

Murals at Bagh caves (Hallisalasya dance, Buddhist or Hindu), Madhya Pradesh

Murals at Ellora caves (Flying vidyadharas, Jain), Maharashtra

Frescoes at Sittanavasal cave (Nature scenes likely representing places of Tirthankara sermons, Jain), Tamil Nadu

Frescoes at Thirunadhikkara cave temple (Flowers and a woman, likely a scene of puja offering to Ganesha, another of Vishnu, Hindu), Travancore region, Kerala-Tamil Nadu

Paintings at the Brihadisvara temple (Dancer, Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Manuscript paintings (numerous states such as Gujarat, Kashmir, Kerala, Odisha, Assam; also Nepal, Tibet; Buddhist, Jain, Hindu

Vijayanagara temples (Hindu), Karnataka

Chidambaram temple (Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Chitrachavadi (Hindu, a choultry–mandapa near Madurai with Ramayana frescoes)

Pahari paintings (Hindu), Himachal Pradesh and nearby regions

Rajput paintings (Hindu), Rajasthan

Deccan paintings (Hindu, Jain)

Kerala paintings (Hindu)

Telangana paintings (Hindu)

Mughal paintings (Indo-Islamic)

 

CONTEMPORARY CULTURE

Kalamkari (Hindu)

Pattas (Jain, Hindu)

 

WIKIPEDIA

Chitra, also spelled as Citra, is an Indian genre of art that includes painting, sketch and any art form of delineation. The earliest mention of the term Chitra in the context of painting or picture is found in some of the ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism and Pali texts of Buddhism

 

NOMENCLATURE

Chitra (IAST: Citra, चित्र) is a Sanskrit word that appears in the Vedic texts such as hymns 1.71.1 and 6.65.2 of the Rigveda. There, and other texts such as Vajasaneyi Samhita, Taittiriya Samhita, Satapatha Brahmana and Tandya Brahmana, Chitra means "excellent, clear, bright, colored, anything brightly colored that strikes the eye, brilliantly ornamented, extraordinary that evokes wonder". In the Mahabharata and the Harivamsa, it means "picture, sktech, dilineation", and is presented as a genre of kala (arts). Many texts generally dated to the post-4th-century BCE period, use the term Chitra in the sense of painting, and Chitrakara as a painter. For example, the Sanskrit grammarian Panini in verse 3.2.21 of his Astadhyayi highlights the word chitrakara in this sense. Halls and public spaces to display paintings are called chitrasalas, and the earliest known mention of these are found in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

 

A few Indian regional texts such as Kasyapa silpa refer to painting by others words. For example, abhasa – which literally means "semblance, shining forth", is used in Kasyapa-shilpa to mean as a broader category of painting, of which chitra is one of three types. The verses in section 4.4 of the Kasyapa-silpa state that there are three types of images – those which are immovable (walls, floor, terracota, stucco), movable, and those which are both movable-immovable (stone, wood, gems).[5] In each of these three, states Kasyapa-shipa, are three classes of expression – ardhacitra, citra, and citra-abhasa. Ardhacitra is an art form where a high relief is combined with painting and parts of the body is not seen (it appears to be emerging out of the canvas). The Citra is the form of picture artwork where the whole is represented with or without integrating a relief. Citrabhasha is the form where an image is represented on a canvas or wall with colors (painting). However, states Commaraswamy, the word Abhasa has other meanings depending on the context. For example, in Hindu texts on philosophy, it implies the "field of objective experience" in the sense of the intellectual image internalized by a person during a reading of a subject (such as an epic, tale or fiction), or one during a meditative spiritual experience.

 

In some Buddhist and Hindu texts on methods to prepare a manuscript (palm leaf) or a composition on a cloth, the terms lekhya and alekhya are also used in the context of a chitra. More specifically, alekhya is the space left while writing a manuscript leaf or cloth, where the artist aims to add a picture or painting to illustrate the text.

 

HISTORY

The earliest explicit reference to painting in an Indian text is found in verse 4.2 of the Maitri Upanishad where it uses the phrase citrabhittir or "like a painted wall". The Indian art of painting is also mention in a number of Buddhist Pali suttas, but with the modified spelling of Citta. This term is found in the context of either a painting, or painter, or painted-hall (citta-gara) in Majjhima Nikaya 1.127, Samyutta Nikaya 2.101 and 3.152, Vinaya 4.289 and others. Among the Jain texts, it is mentioned in Book 2 of the Acaranga Sutra as it explains that Jaina monk should not indulge in the pleasures of watching a painting.

 

The Kamasutra, broadly accepted to have been complete by about the 4th-century CE, recommends that the young man should surprise the girl he courts with gifts of color boxes and painted scrolls. The Viddhasalabhanjika – another Hindu kama- and kavya–text uses chitra-simile in verse 1.16, as "pictures painted by the god of love, with the brush of the mind and the canvas of the heart".

 

The nature of a chitra (painting), how the viewer's mind projects a two dimensional artwork into a three dimensional representation, is used by Asanga in Mahayana Sutralamkara – a 3rd to 5th-century Sanskrit text of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, to explain "non-existent imagination" as follows:

 

Just as in a picture painted according to rules, there are neither projections nor depressions and yet we see it in three dimensions, so in the non-existent imagination there is no phenomenal differentiation, and yet we behold it.

— Mahayana Sutralamkara 13.7, Translated in French by Sylvain Levi

 

According to Yoko Taniguchi and Michiyo Mori, the art of painting the caves at the c. 6th-century Buddhas of Bamiyan site in Afghanistan, destroyed by the Taliban Muslims in the late 1990s, were likely introduced to this region from India along with the literature on early Buddhism.

 

TEXTS

There are many important dedicated Indian treatises on chitra. Some of these are chapters within a larger encyclopedia-like text. These include:

 

Chitrasutras, chapters 35–43 within the Hindu text Vishnudharmottara Purana (the standard, and oft referred to text in the Indian tradition)

Chitralaksana of Nagnajit (a classic on classical painting, 5th-century CE or earlier making it the oldest known text on Indian painting; but the Sanskrit version has been lost, only version available is in Tibet and it states that it is a translation of a Sanskrit text)

Samarangana Sutradhara (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Aparajitaprccha (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Manasollasa (an encyclopedia, contains chapters on paintings)

Abhilashitartha chinatamani

Sivatatva ratnakara

Chitra Kaladruma

Silpa ratna

Narada silpa

Sarasvati silpa

Prajapati silpa

Kasyapa silpa

 

These and other texts on chitra not only discuss the theory and practice of painting, some of them include discussions on how to become a painter, the diversity and the impact of a chitra on viewers, of aesthetics, how the art of painting relates to other arts (kala), methods of preparing the canvas or wall, methods and recipes to make color pigments. For example, the 10th-century Chitra Kaladruma presents recipe for making red color paint from the resin of lac insects. Other colors for the historic frescoes found in India, such as those in the Ajanta Caves, were obtained from nature. They mention earthy and mineral (inorganic) colorants such as yellow and red ochre, orpigment, green celadonite and ultramarine blue (lapis lazuli). The use of organic colorants prepared per a recipe in these texts have been confirmed through residue analysis and modern chromatographic techniques.

 

THEORY

The Indian concepts of painting are described in a range of texts called the shilpa shastras. These typically begin by attributing this art to divine sources such as Vishvakarma and ancient rishis (sages) such as Narayana and Nagnajit, weaving some mythology, highlighting chitra as a means to express ideas and beauty along with other universal aspects, then proceed to discuss the theory and practice of painting, sketching and other related arts. Manuscripts of many these texts are found in India, while some are known to be lost but are found outside India such as in Tibet and Nepal. Among these are the Citrasutras in the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana manuscripts discovered in India, and the Citralaksana manuscript discovered in Tibet (lost in India). This theory include early Indian ideas on how to prepare a canvas or substrate, measurement, proportion, stance, color, shade, projection, the painting's interaction with light, the viewer, how to captivate the mind, and other ideas.

 

According to the historic Indian tradition, a successful and impactful painting and painter requires a knowledge of the subject – either mythology or real life, as well as a keen sense of observation and knowledge of nature, human behavior, dance, music, song and other arts. For example, section 3.2 of Visnudharmottara Purana discusses these requirements and the contextual knowledge needed in chitra and the artist who produces it. The Chitrasutras in the Vishnudharmottara Purana state that the sculpture and painting arts are related, with the phrase "as in Natya, so in Citra". This relationship links them in rasa (aesthetics) and as forms of expression.

 

THE PAINTING

A chitra is a form of expression and communication. According to Aparajitaprccha – a 12th-century text on arts and architecture, just like the water reflects the moon, a chitra reflects the world. It is a rupa (form) of how the painter sees or what the painter wants the viewer to observe or feel or experience.

 

A good painting is one that is alive, breathing, draws in and affects the viewer. It captivates the minds of viewers, despite their diversity. Installed in a sala (hall or room), it enlivens the space.

 

The ornaments of a painting are its lines, shading, decoration and colors, states the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana. It states that there are eight gunas (merits, features) of a chitra that the artist must focus on: posture; proportion; the use of the plumb line; charm; detail (how much and where); verisimilitude; kshaya (loss, foreshortening) and; vrddhi (gain). Among the dosas (demerits, faults) of a painting and related arts, states Chitrasutra, are lines that are weak or thick, absence of variety, errors in scale (oversized eyes, lips, cheeks), inconsistency across the canvas, deviations from the rules of proportion, improper posture or sentiment, and non-merging of colors.

 

LIMBS OF THE PAINTING

Two historical sets called "chitra anga", or "limbs of painting" are found in Indian texts. According to the Samarangana Sutradhara – an 11th-century Sanskrit text on Hindu architecture and arts, a painting has eight limbs:

 

Vartika – manufacture of brushes

Bhumibandhana – preparation of base, plaster, canvas

Rekhakarma – sketching

Varnakarma – coloring

Vartanakarma – shading

lekhakarana – outlining

Dvikakarma – second and final lining

Lepyakarma – final coating

 

According to Yashodhara's Jayamangala, a Sanskrit commentary on Kamasutra, there are sadanga (six limbs)[note 5] in the art of alekhyam and chitra (drawing and painting):

 

Rupa-bhedah, or form distinction; this requires a knowledge of characteristic marks, diversity, manifested forms that distinguish states of something in the same genus/class

Pramanani, or measure; requires knowledge of measurement and proportion rules (talamana)

Bhava yojanam, or emotion and its joining with other parts of the painting; requires understanding and representing the mood of the subject

Lavanya yojanam, or rasa, charm; requires understanding and representing the inner qualities of the subject

Sadrsyam, or resemblance; requires knowledge of visual correspondence across the canvas

Varnika-bhanga or color-pigment-analysis; requires knowledge how colors distribute on the canvas and how they visually impact the viewer.

 

These six limbs are arranged stylistically in two ways. First as a set of compound (Rupa-bhedah and Varnika-bhanda), a set of joining (middle two yojnam), and a set of single words (Pramanani and Sadrsyam). Second, states Victor Mair, the six limbs in this Hindu text are paired in a set of differentiation skills (first two), then a pair of aesthetic skills, and finally a pair of technical skills. These limbs parallel the 12th-century Six principles of Chinese painting of Xie He. {refn|group=note|The Hua Chi of Teng Ch'un, a 12th-century Chinese text, mentions the Buddhist temple of Nalanda with frescoes about the Buddha painted inside. It states that the Indian Buddhas look different from those painted by Chinese, as the Indian paintings have Buddha with larger eyes, their ears are curiously stretched and the Buddhas have their right shoulder bare. It then states that the artists first make a drawing of the picture, then paint a vermilion or gold colored base. It also mentions the use of ox-glue and a gum produced from peach trees and willow juice, with the artists preferring the latter. According to Coomaraswamy, the ox-glue in the Indian context mentioned in the Chinese text is probably the same as the recipe found in the Sanskrit text Silparatna, one where the base medium is produced from boiling buffalo skin in milk, followed by drying and blending process.

 

The six limbs in Jayamangala likely reflect the earliest and more established Hindu tradition for chitra. This is supported by the Chitrasutras found in the Vishnudharmottara Purana. They explicitly mention pramanani and lavanya as key elements of a painting, as well as discuss the other four of the six limbs in other sutras. The Chitrasutra chapters are likely from about the 4th or 5th-century. Numerous other Indian texts touch upon the elements or aspects of a chitra. For example, the Aparajitaprccha states that the essential elements of a painting are: citrabhumi (background), the rekha (lines, sketch), the varna (color), the vartana (shading), the bhusana (decoration) and the rasa (aesthetic experience).

 

THE PAINTER

The painter (chitrakara, rupakara) must master the fundamentals of measurement and proportions, state the historic chitra texts of India. According to these historic texts, the expert painter masters the skills in measurement, characteristics of subjects, attributes, form, relative proportion, ornament and beauty, states Isabella Nardi – a scholar known for her studies on chitra text and traditions of India. According to the Chitrasutras, a skilled painter needs practice, and is one who is able to paint neck, hands, feet, ears of living beings without ornamentation, as well as paint water waves, flames, smoke, and garments as they get affected by the speed of wind. He paints all types of scenes, ranging from dharma, artha and kama. A painter observes, then remembers, repeating this process till his memory has all the details he needs to paint, states Silparatna. According to Sivatattva Ratnakara, he is well versed in sketching, astute with measurements, skilled in outlining (hastalekha), competent with colors, and ready to diligently mix and combine colors to create his chitra. The painter is a creative person, with an inner sense of rasa (aesthetics).

 

THE VIEWER

The painter should consider the diversity of viewers, states the Indian tradition of chitra. The experts and critics with much experience with paintings study the lines, shading and aesthetics, the uninitiated visitors and children enjoy the vibrancy of colors, while women tend to be attracted to the ornamentation of form and the emotions. A successful painter tends to captivate a variety of minds. A painter should remember that the visual and aesthetic impact of a painting triggers different responses in different audiences.

 

The Silparatna – a Sanskrit text on the arts, states that the painting should reflect its intended place and purpose. A theme suitable for a palace or gateway is different from that in a temple or the walls of a home. Scenes of wars, misery, death and suffering are not suitable paintings within homes, but these can be important in a chitrasala (museum with paintings). Auspicious paintings with beautiful colors such as those that cheer and enliven a room are better for homes, states Silparatna.

 

PRACITICE

According to the art historian Percy Brown, the painting tradition in India is ancient and the persuasive evidence are the oldest known murals at the Jogimara caves. The mention of chitra and related terms in the pre-Buddhist Vedic era texts, the chitra tradition is much older. It is very likely, states Brown, the pre-Buddhist structures had paintings in them. However, the primary building material in ancient India was wood, the colors were organic materials and natural pigments, which when combined with the tropical weather in India would naturally cause the painting to fade, damage and degrade over the centuries. It is not surprising, therefore, that sample paintings and historic evidence for chitra practice are unusual. The few notable surviving examples of chitra are found hidden in caves, where they would be naturally preserved a bit better, longer and would be somewhat protected from the destructive effects of wind, dust, water and biological processes.

Some notable, major surviving examples of historic paintings include:

 

Murals at Jogimara cave (eight panels of murals, with a Brahmi inscription, 2nd or 1st century BCE, Hindu), oldest known ceiling paintings in India in remote Ramgarh hills of northern Chhattisgarh, below on wall of this cave is a Brahmi inscription in Magadhi language about a girl named Devadasi and a boy named Devadina (either they were lovers and wrote a love-graffiti per one translation, or they were partners who together converted natural caves here into a theatre with painted walls per another translation)

 

Mural at Sitabhinji Group of Rock Shelters (c. 400 CE Ravanachhaya mural with an inscription, near a Shiva temple in remote Odisha, a non-religious painting), the oldest surviving example of a tempera painting in eastern states of India

 

Murals at Ajanta caves (Jataka tales, Buddhist), 5th-century CE, Maharashtra

Murals at Badami Cave Temples (Hindu), 6th-century CE, Karnataka (secular paintings along with one of the earliest known painting of a Hindu legend about Shiva and Parvati inside a Vaishnava cave)

Murals at Bagh caves (Hallisalasya dance, Buddhist or Hindu), Madhya Pradesh

Murals at Ellora caves (Flying vidyadharas, Jain), Maharashtra

Frescoes at Sittanavasal cave (Nature scenes likely representing places of Tirthankara sermons, Jain), Tamil Nadu

Frescoes at Thirunadhikkara cave temple (Flowers and a woman, likely a scene of puja offering to Ganesha, another of Vishnu, Hindu), Travancore region, Kerala-Tamil Nadu

Paintings at the Brihadisvara temple (Dancer, Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Manuscript paintings (numerous states such as Gujarat, Kashmir, Kerala, Odisha, Assam; also Nepal, Tibet; Buddhist, Jain, Hindu

Vijayanagara temples (Hindu), Karnataka

Chidambaram temple (Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Chitrachavadi (Hindu, a choultry–mandapa near Madurai with Ramayana frescoes)

Pahari paintings (Hindu), Himachal Pradesh and nearby regions

Rajput paintings (Hindu), Rajasthan

Deccan paintings (Hindu, Jain)

Kerala paintings (Hindu)

Telangana paintings (Hindu)

Mughal paintings (Indo-Islamic)

 

CONTEMPORARY CULTURE

Kalamkari (Hindu)

Pattas (Jain, Hindu)

 

WIKIPEDIA

If you're not down with Pink Striped Black Spandex Biking Shorts, double dragon, and sustaining vengeful poise under the excruciating pains or mortal wounds whilst standing victorious over your foe blasting multiple rounds in his pixelated dome post mortem, duuuude, get the fuck out of my Bar and grille/life/the planet/Universe and listen to Fugazi all by yourself in Hell.

   

*Just kidding, I've never listened to Fugazi, but it's been more often than not the fucks that hype man praise them tend to chupar mis los testiculos unfavorably*

   

*But I did listen to a 10 second sound clip once and summarized the entire catalog as something I'll willingly do without in this life and the next, and the next and the one after that.*

              

BLAOW NIGGA BLAOWW!!

      

Just joker'n around

Chitra, also spelled as Citra, is an Indian genre of art that includes painting, sketch and any art form of delineation. The earliest mention of the term Chitra in the context of painting or picture is found in some of the ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism and Pali texts of Buddhism

 

NOMENCLATURE

Chitra (IAST: Citra, चित्र) is a Sanskrit word that appears in the Vedic texts such as hymns 1.71.1 and 6.65.2 of the Rigveda. There, and other texts such as Vajasaneyi Samhita, Taittiriya Samhita, Satapatha Brahmana and Tandya Brahmana, Chitra means "excellent, clear, bright, colored, anything brightly colored that strikes the eye, brilliantly ornamented, extraordinary that evokes wonder". In the Mahabharata and the Harivamsa, it means "picture, sktech, dilineation", and is presented as a genre of kala (arts). Many texts generally dated to the post-4th-century BCE period, use the term Chitra in the sense of painting, and Chitrakara as a painter. For example, the Sanskrit grammarian Panini in verse 3.2.21 of his Astadhyayi highlights the word chitrakara in this sense. Halls and public spaces to display paintings are called chitrasalas, and the earliest known mention of these are found in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

 

A few Indian regional texts such as Kasyapa silpa refer to painting by others words. For example, abhasa – which literally means "semblance, shining forth", is used in Kasyapa-shilpa to mean as a broader category of painting, of which chitra is one of three types. The verses in section 4.4 of the Kasyapa-silpa state that there are three types of images – those which are immovable (walls, floor, terracota, stucco), movable, and those which are both movable-immovable (stone, wood, gems).[5] In each of these three, states Kasyapa-shipa, are three classes of expression – ardhacitra, citra, and citra-abhasa. Ardhacitra is an art form where a high relief is combined with painting and parts of the body is not seen (it appears to be emerging out of the canvas). The Citra is the form of picture artwork where the whole is represented with or without integrating a relief. Citrabhasha is the form where an image is represented on a canvas or wall with colors (painting). However, states Commaraswamy, the word Abhasa has other meanings depending on the context. For example, in Hindu texts on philosophy, it implies the "field of objective experience" in the sense of the intellectual image internalized by a person during a reading of a subject (such as an epic, tale or fiction), or one during a meditative spiritual experience.

 

In some Buddhist and Hindu texts on methods to prepare a manuscript (palm leaf) or a composition on a cloth, the terms lekhya and alekhya are also used in the context of a chitra. More specifically, alekhya is the space left while writing a manuscript leaf or cloth, where the artist aims to add a picture or painting to illustrate the text.

 

HISTORY

The earliest explicit reference to painting in an Indian text is found in verse 4.2 of the Maitri Upanishad where it uses the phrase citrabhittir or "like a painted wall". The Indian art of painting is also mention in a number of Buddhist Pali suttas, but with the modified spelling of Citta. This term is found in the context of either a painting, or painter, or painted-hall (citta-gara) in Majjhima Nikaya 1.127, Samyutta Nikaya 2.101 and 3.152, Vinaya 4.289 and others. Among the Jain texts, it is mentioned in Book 2 of the Acaranga Sutra as it explains that Jaina monk should not indulge in the pleasures of watching a painting.

 

The Kamasutra, broadly accepted to have been complete by about the 4th-century CE, recommends that the young man should surprise the girl he courts with gifts of color boxes and painted scrolls. The Viddhasalabhanjika – another Hindu kama- and kavya–text uses chitra-simile in verse 1.16, as "pictures painted by the god of love, with the brush of the mind and the canvas of the heart".

 

The nature of a chitra (painting), how the viewer's mind projects a two dimensional artwork into a three dimensional representation, is used by Asanga in Mahayana Sutralamkara – a 3rd to 5th-century Sanskrit text of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, to explain "non-existent imagination" as follows:

 

Just as in a picture painted according to rules, there are neither projections nor depressions and yet we see it in three dimensions, so in the non-existent imagination there is no phenomenal differentiation, and yet we behold it.

— Mahayana Sutralamkara 13.7, Translated in French by Sylvain Levi

 

According to Yoko Taniguchi and Michiyo Mori, the art of painting the caves at the c. 6th-century Buddhas of Bamiyan site in Afghanistan, destroyed by the Taliban Muslims in the late 1990s, were likely introduced to this region from India along with the literature on early Buddhism.

 

TEXTS

There are many important dedicated Indian treatises on chitra. Some of these are chapters within a larger encyclopedia-like text. These include:

 

Chitrasutras, chapters 35–43 within the Hindu text Vishnudharmottara Purana (the standard, and oft referred to text in the Indian tradition)

Chitralaksana of Nagnajit (a classic on classical painting, 5th-century CE or earlier making it the oldest known text on Indian painting; but the Sanskrit version has been lost, only version available is in Tibet and it states that it is a translation of a Sanskrit text)

Samarangana Sutradhara (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Aparajitaprccha (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Manasollasa (an encyclopedia, contains chapters on paintings)

Abhilashitartha chinatamani

Sivatatva ratnakara

Chitra Kaladruma

Silpa ratna

Narada silpa

Sarasvati silpa

Prajapati silpa

Kasyapa silpa

 

These and other texts on chitra not only discuss the theory and practice of painting, some of them include discussions on how to become a painter, the diversity and the impact of a chitra on viewers, of aesthetics, how the art of painting relates to other arts (kala), methods of preparing the canvas or wall, methods and recipes to make color pigments. For example, the 10th-century Chitra Kaladruma presents recipe for making red color paint from the resin of lac insects. Other colors for the historic frescoes found in India, such as those in the Ajanta Caves, were obtained from nature. They mention earthy and mineral (inorganic) colorants such as yellow and red ochre, orpigment, green celadonite and ultramarine blue (lapis lazuli). The use of organic colorants prepared per a recipe in these texts have been confirmed through residue analysis and modern chromatographic techniques.

 

THEORY

The Indian concepts of painting are described in a range of texts called the shilpa shastras. These typically begin by attributing this art to divine sources such as Vishvakarma and ancient rishis (sages) such as Narayana and Nagnajit, weaving some mythology, highlighting chitra as a means to express ideas and beauty along with other universal aspects, then proceed to discuss the theory and practice of painting, sketching and other related arts. Manuscripts of many these texts are found in India, while some are known to be lost but are found outside India such as in Tibet and Nepal. Among these are the Citrasutras in the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana manuscripts discovered in India, and the Citralaksana manuscript discovered in Tibet (lost in India). This theory include early Indian ideas on how to prepare a canvas or substrate, measurement, proportion, stance, color, shade, projection, the painting's interaction with light, the viewer, how to captivate the mind, and other ideas.

 

According to the historic Indian tradition, a successful and impactful painting and painter requires a knowledge of the subject – either mythology or real life, as well as a keen sense of observation and knowledge of nature, human behavior, dance, music, song and other arts. For example, section 3.2 of Visnudharmottara Purana discusses these requirements and the contextual knowledge needed in chitra and the artist who produces it. The Chitrasutras in the Vishnudharmottara Purana state that the sculpture and painting arts are related, with the phrase "as in Natya, so in Citra". This relationship links them in rasa (aesthetics) and as forms of expression.

 

THE PAINTING

A chitra is a form of expression and communication. According to Aparajitaprccha – a 12th-century text on arts and architecture, just like the water reflects the moon, a chitra reflects the world. It is a rupa (form) of how the painter sees or what the painter wants the viewer to observe or feel or experience.

 

A good painting is one that is alive, breathing, draws in and affects the viewer. It captivates the minds of viewers, despite their diversity. Installed in a sala (hall or room), it enlivens the space.

 

The ornaments of a painting are its lines, shading, decoration and colors, states the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana. It states that there are eight gunas (merits, features) of a chitra that the artist must focus on: posture; proportion; the use of the plumb line; charm; detail (how much and where); verisimilitude; kshaya (loss, foreshortening) and; vrddhi (gain). Among the dosas (demerits, faults) of a painting and related arts, states Chitrasutra, are lines that are weak or thick, absence of variety, errors in scale (oversized eyes, lips, cheeks), inconsistency across the canvas, deviations from the rules of proportion, improper posture or sentiment, and non-merging of colors.

 

LIMBS OF THE PAINTING

Two historical sets called "chitra anga", or "limbs of painting" are found in Indian texts. According to the Samarangana Sutradhara – an 11th-century Sanskrit text on Hindu architecture and arts, a painting has eight limbs:

 

Vartika – manufacture of brushes

Bhumibandhana – preparation of base, plaster, canvas

Rekhakarma – sketching

Varnakarma – coloring

Vartanakarma – shading

lekhakarana – outlining

Dvikakarma – second and final lining

Lepyakarma – final coating

 

According to Yashodhara's Jayamangala, a Sanskrit commentary on Kamasutra, there are sadanga (six limbs)[note 5] in the art of alekhyam and chitra (drawing and painting):

 

Rupa-bhedah, or form distinction; this requires a knowledge of characteristic marks, diversity, manifested forms that distinguish states of something in the same genus/class

Pramanani, or measure; requires knowledge of measurement and proportion rules (talamana)

Bhava yojanam, or emotion and its joining with other parts of the painting; requires understanding and representing the mood of the subject

Lavanya yojanam, or rasa, charm; requires understanding and representing the inner qualities of the subject

Sadrsyam, or resemblance; requires knowledge of visual correspondence across the canvas

Varnika-bhanga or color-pigment-analysis; requires knowledge how colors distribute on the canvas and how they visually impact the viewer.

 

These six limbs are arranged stylistically in two ways. First as a set of compound (Rupa-bhedah and Varnika-bhanda), a set of joining (middle two yojnam), and a set of single words (Pramanani and Sadrsyam). Second, states Victor Mair, the six limbs in this Hindu text are paired in a set of differentiation skills (first two), then a pair of aesthetic skills, and finally a pair of technical skills. These limbs parallel the 12th-century Six principles of Chinese painting of Xie He. {refn|group=note|The Hua Chi of Teng Ch'un, a 12th-century Chinese text, mentions the Buddhist temple of Nalanda with frescoes about the Buddha painted inside. It states that the Indian Buddhas look different from those painted by Chinese, as the Indian paintings have Buddha with larger eyes, their ears are curiously stretched and the Buddhas have their right shoulder bare. It then states that the artists first make a drawing of the picture, then paint a vermilion or gold colored base. It also mentions the use of ox-glue and a gum produced from peach trees and willow juice, with the artists preferring the latter. According to Coomaraswamy, the ox-glue in the Indian context mentioned in the Chinese text is probably the same as the recipe found in the Sanskrit text Silparatna, one where the base medium is produced from boiling buffalo skin in milk, followed by drying and blending process.

 

The six limbs in Jayamangala likely reflect the earliest and more established Hindu tradition for chitra. This is supported by the Chitrasutras found in the Vishnudharmottara Purana. They explicitly mention pramanani and lavanya as key elements of a painting, as well as discuss the other four of the six limbs in other sutras. The Chitrasutra chapters are likely from about the 4th or 5th-century. Numerous other Indian texts touch upon the elements or aspects of a chitra. For example, the Aparajitaprccha states that the essential elements of a painting are: citrabhumi (background), the rekha (lines, sketch), the varna (color), the vartana (shading), the bhusana (decoration) and the rasa (aesthetic experience).

 

THE PAINTER

The painter (chitrakara, rupakara) must master the fundamentals of measurement and proportions, state the historic chitra texts of India. According to these historic texts, the expert painter masters the skills in measurement, characteristics of subjects, attributes, form, relative proportion, ornament and beauty, states Isabella Nardi – a scholar known for her studies on chitra text and traditions of India. According to the Chitrasutras, a skilled painter needs practice, and is one who is able to paint neck, hands, feet, ears of living beings without ornamentation, as well as paint water waves, flames, smoke, and garments as they get affected by the speed of wind. He paints all types of scenes, ranging from dharma, artha and kama. A painter observes, then remembers, repeating this process till his memory has all the details he needs to paint, states Silparatna. According to Sivatattva Ratnakara, he is well versed in sketching, astute with measurements, skilled in outlining (hastalekha), competent with colors, and ready to diligently mix and combine colors to create his chitra. The painter is a creative person, with an inner sense of rasa (aesthetics).

 

THE VIEWER

The painter should consider the diversity of viewers, states the Indian tradition of chitra. The experts and critics with much experience with paintings study the lines, shading and aesthetics, the uninitiated visitors and children enjoy the vibrancy of colors, while women tend to be attracted to the ornamentation of form and the emotions. A successful painter tends to captivate a variety of minds. A painter should remember that the visual and aesthetic impact of a painting triggers different responses in different audiences.

 

The Silparatna – a Sanskrit text on the arts, states that the painting should reflect its intended place and purpose. A theme suitable for a palace or gateway is different from that in a temple or the walls of a home. Scenes of wars, misery, death and suffering are not suitable paintings within homes, but these can be important in a chitrasala (museum with paintings). Auspicious paintings with beautiful colors such as those that cheer and enliven a room are better for homes, states Silparatna.

 

PRACITICE

According to the art historian Percy Brown, the painting tradition in India is ancient and the persuasive evidence are the oldest known murals at the Jogimara caves. The mention of chitra and related terms in the pre-Buddhist Vedic era texts, the chitra tradition is much older. It is very likely, states Brown, the pre-Buddhist structures had paintings in them. However, the primary building material in ancient India was wood, the colors were organic materials and natural pigments, which when combined with the tropical weather in India would naturally cause the painting to fade, damage and degrade over the centuries. It is not surprising, therefore, that sample paintings and historic evidence for chitra practice are unusual. The few notable surviving examples of chitra are found hidden in caves, where they would be naturally preserved a bit better, longer and would be somewhat protected from the destructive effects of wind, dust, water and biological processes.

Some notable, major surviving examples of historic paintings include:

 

Murals at Jogimara cave (eight panels of murals, with a Brahmi inscription, 2nd or 1st century BCE, Hindu), oldest known ceiling paintings in India in remote Ramgarh hills of northern Chhattisgarh, below on wall of this cave is a Brahmi inscription in Magadhi language about a girl named Devadasi and a boy named Devadina (either they were lovers and wrote a love-graffiti per one translation, or they were partners who together converted natural caves here into a theatre with painted walls per another translation)

 

Mural at Sitabhinji Group of Rock Shelters (c. 400 CE Ravanachhaya mural with an inscription, near a Shiva temple in remote Odisha, a non-religious painting), the oldest surviving example of a tempera painting in eastern states of India

 

Murals at Ajanta caves (Jataka tales, Buddhist), 5th-century CE, Maharashtra

Murals at Badami Cave Temples (Hindu), 6th-century CE, Karnataka (secular paintings along with one of the earliest known painting of a Hindu legend about Shiva and Parvati inside a Vaishnava cave)

Murals at Bagh caves (Hallisalasya dance, Buddhist or Hindu), Madhya Pradesh

Murals at Ellora caves (Flying vidyadharas, Jain), Maharashtra

Frescoes at Sittanavasal cave (Nature scenes likely representing places of Tirthankara sermons, Jain), Tamil Nadu

Frescoes at Thirunadhikkara cave temple (Flowers and a woman, likely a scene of puja offering to Ganesha, another of Vishnu, Hindu), Travancore region, Kerala-Tamil Nadu

Paintings at the Brihadisvara temple (Dancer, Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Manuscript paintings (numerous states such as Gujarat, Kashmir, Kerala, Odisha, Assam; also Nepal, Tibet; Buddhist, Jain, Hindu

Vijayanagara temples (Hindu), Karnataka

Chidambaram temple (Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Chitrachavadi (Hindu, a choultry–mandapa near Madurai with Ramayana frescoes)

Pahari paintings (Hindu), Himachal Pradesh and nearby regions

Rajput paintings (Hindu), Rajasthan

Deccan paintings (Hindu, Jain)

Kerala paintings (Hindu)

Telangana paintings (Hindu)

Mughal paintings (Indo-Islamic)

 

CONTEMPORARY CULTURE

Kalamkari (Hindu)

Pattas (Jain, Hindu)

 

WIKIPEDIA

Challenge: wire a dynamo headlight, taillight, and stem-cap USB charger. Use with or without fenders. Keep wires hidden. Make fenders removable in less than 5 minutes. Make connections solid.

 

Enter, the ground bus. Generator, headlight, taillight and USB will all ground independently via 2mm banana plugs to this bus attached to the fork crown fender mount. The tube next to the bolt will route the wiring up the steerer to the USB charger, completely internalized.

Chitra, also spelled as Citra, is an Indian genre of art that includes painting, sketch and any art form of delineation. The earliest mention of the term Chitra in the context of painting or picture is found in some of the ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism and Pali texts of Buddhism

 

NOMENCLATURE

Chitra (IAST: Citra, चित्र) is a Sanskrit word that appears in the Vedic texts such as hymns 1.71.1 and 6.65.2 of the Rigveda. There, and other texts such as Vajasaneyi Samhita, Taittiriya Samhita, Satapatha Brahmana and Tandya Brahmana, Chitra means "excellent, clear, bright, colored, anything brightly colored that strikes the eye, brilliantly ornamented, extraordinary that evokes wonder". In the Mahabharata and the Harivamsa, it means "picture, sktech, dilineation", and is presented as a genre of kala (arts). Many texts generally dated to the post-4th-century BCE period, use the term Chitra in the sense of painting, and Chitrakara as a painter. For example, the Sanskrit grammarian Panini in verse 3.2.21 of his Astadhyayi highlights the word chitrakara in this sense. Halls and public spaces to display paintings are called chitrasalas, and the earliest known mention of these are found in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

 

A few Indian regional texts such as Kasyapa silpa refer to painting by others words. For example, abhasa – which literally means "semblance, shining forth", is used in Kasyapa-shilpa to mean as a broader category of painting, of which chitra is one of three types. The verses in section 4.4 of the Kasyapa-silpa state that there are three types of images – those which are immovable (walls, floor, terracota, stucco), movable, and those which are both movable-immovable (stone, wood, gems).[5] In each of these three, states Kasyapa-shipa, are three classes of expression – ardhacitra, citra, and citra-abhasa. Ardhacitra is an art form where a high relief is combined with painting and parts of the body is not seen (it appears to be emerging out of the canvas). The Citra is the form of picture artwork where the whole is represented with or without integrating a relief. Citrabhasha is the form where an image is represented on a canvas or wall with colors (painting). However, states Commaraswamy, the word Abhasa has other meanings depending on the context. For example, in Hindu texts on philosophy, it implies the "field of objective experience" in the sense of the intellectual image internalized by a person during a reading of a subject (such as an epic, tale or fiction), or one during a meditative spiritual experience.

 

In some Buddhist and Hindu texts on methods to prepare a manuscript (palm leaf) or a composition on a cloth, the terms lekhya and alekhya are also used in the context of a chitra. More specifically, alekhya is the space left while writing a manuscript leaf or cloth, where the artist aims to add a picture or painting to illustrate the text.

 

HISTORY

The earliest explicit reference to painting in an Indian text is found in verse 4.2 of the Maitri Upanishad where it uses the phrase citrabhittir or "like a painted wall". The Indian art of painting is also mention in a number of Buddhist Pali suttas, but with the modified spelling of Citta. This term is found in the context of either a painting, or painter, or painted-hall (citta-gara) in Majjhima Nikaya 1.127, Samyutta Nikaya 2.101 and 3.152, Vinaya 4.289 and others. Among the Jain texts, it is mentioned in Book 2 of the Acaranga Sutra as it explains that Jaina monk should not indulge in the pleasures of watching a painting.

 

The Kamasutra, broadly accepted to have been complete by about the 4th-century CE, recommends that the young man should surprise the girl he courts with gifts of color boxes and painted scrolls. The Viddhasalabhanjika – another Hindu kama- and kavya–text uses chitra-simile in verse 1.16, as "pictures painted by the god of love, with the brush of the mind and the canvas of the heart".

 

The nature of a chitra (painting), how the viewer's mind projects a two dimensional artwork into a three dimensional representation, is used by Asanga in Mahayana Sutralamkara – a 3rd to 5th-century Sanskrit text of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, to explain "non-existent imagination" as follows:

 

Just as in a picture painted according to rules, there are neither projections nor depressions and yet we see it in three dimensions, so in the non-existent imagination there is no phenomenal differentiation, and yet we behold it.

— Mahayana Sutralamkara 13.7, Translated in French by Sylvain Levi

 

According to Yoko Taniguchi and Michiyo Mori, the art of painting the caves at the c. 6th-century Buddhas of Bamiyan site in Afghanistan, destroyed by the Taliban Muslims in the late 1990s, were likely introduced to this region from India along with the literature on early Buddhism.

 

TEXTS

There are many important dedicated Indian treatises on chitra. Some of these are chapters within a larger encyclopedia-like text. These include:

 

Chitrasutras, chapters 35–43 within the Hindu text Vishnudharmottara Purana (the standard, and oft referred to text in the Indian tradition)

Chitralaksana of Nagnajit (a classic on classical painting, 5th-century CE or earlier making it the oldest known text on Indian painting; but the Sanskrit version has been lost, only version available is in Tibet and it states that it is a translation of a Sanskrit text)

Samarangana Sutradhara (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Aparajitaprccha (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Manasollasa (an encyclopedia, contains chapters on paintings)

Abhilashitartha chinatamani

Sivatatva ratnakara

Chitra Kaladruma

Silpa ratna

Narada silpa

Sarasvati silpa

Prajapati silpa

Kasyapa silpa

 

These and other texts on chitra not only discuss the theory and practice of painting, some of them include discussions on how to become a painter, the diversity and the impact of a chitra on viewers, of aesthetics, how the art of painting relates to other arts (kala), methods of preparing the canvas or wall, methods and recipes to make color pigments. For example, the 10th-century Chitra Kaladruma presents recipe for making red color paint from the resin of lac insects. Other colors for the historic frescoes found in India, such as those in the Ajanta Caves, were obtained from nature. They mention earthy and mineral (inorganic) colorants such as yellow and red ochre, orpigment, green celadonite and ultramarine blue (lapis lazuli). The use of organic colorants prepared per a recipe in these texts have been confirmed through residue analysis and modern chromatographic techniques.

 

THEORY

The Indian concepts of painting are described in a range of texts called the shilpa shastras. These typically begin by attributing this art to divine sources such as Vishvakarma and ancient rishis (sages) such as Narayana and Nagnajit, weaving some mythology, highlighting chitra as a means to express ideas and beauty along with other universal aspects, then proceed to discuss the theory and practice of painting, sketching and other related arts. Manuscripts of many these texts are found in India, while some are known to be lost but are found outside India such as in Tibet and Nepal. Among these are the Citrasutras in the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana manuscripts discovered in India, and the Citralaksana manuscript discovered in Tibet (lost in India). This theory include early Indian ideas on how to prepare a canvas or substrate, measurement, proportion, stance, color, shade, projection, the painting's interaction with light, the viewer, how to captivate the mind, and other ideas.

 

According to the historic Indian tradition, a successful and impactful painting and painter requires a knowledge of the subject – either mythology or real life, as well as a keen sense of observation and knowledge of nature, human behavior, dance, music, song and other arts. For example, section 3.2 of Visnudharmottara Purana discusses these requirements and the contextual knowledge needed in chitra and the artist who produces it. The Chitrasutras in the Vishnudharmottara Purana state that the sculpture and painting arts are related, with the phrase "as in Natya, so in Citra". This relationship links them in rasa (aesthetics) and as forms of expression.

 

THE PAINTING

A chitra is a form of expression and communication. According to Aparajitaprccha – a 12th-century text on arts and architecture, just like the water reflects the moon, a chitra reflects the world. It is a rupa (form) of how the painter sees or what the painter wants the viewer to observe or feel or experience.

 

A good painting is one that is alive, breathing, draws in and affects the viewer. It captivates the minds of viewers, despite their diversity. Installed in a sala (hall or room), it enlivens the space.

 

The ornaments of a painting are its lines, shading, decoration and colors, states the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana. It states that there are eight gunas (merits, features) of a chitra that the artist must focus on: posture; proportion; the use of the plumb line; charm; detail (how much and where); verisimilitude; kshaya (loss, foreshortening) and; vrddhi (gain). Among the dosas (demerits, faults) of a painting and related arts, states Chitrasutra, are lines that are weak or thick, absence of variety, errors in scale (oversized eyes, lips, cheeks), inconsistency across the canvas, deviations from the rules of proportion, improper posture or sentiment, and non-merging of colors.

 

LIMBS OF THE PAINTING

Two historical sets called "chitra anga", or "limbs of painting" are found in Indian texts. According to the Samarangana Sutradhara – an 11th-century Sanskrit text on Hindu architecture and arts, a painting has eight limbs:

 

Vartika – manufacture of brushes

Bhumibandhana – preparation of base, plaster, canvas

Rekhakarma – sketching

Varnakarma – coloring

Vartanakarma – shading

lekhakarana – outlining

Dvikakarma – second and final lining

Lepyakarma – final coating

 

According to Yashodhara's Jayamangala, a Sanskrit commentary on Kamasutra, there are sadanga (six limbs)[note 5] in the art of alekhyam and chitra (drawing and painting):

 

Rupa-bhedah, or form distinction; this requires a knowledge of characteristic marks, diversity, manifested forms that distinguish states of something in the same genus/class

Pramanani, or measure; requires knowledge of measurement and proportion rules (talamana)

Bhava yojanam, or emotion and its joining with other parts of the painting; requires understanding and representing the mood of the subject

Lavanya yojanam, or rasa, charm; requires understanding and representing the inner qualities of the subject

Sadrsyam, or resemblance; requires knowledge of visual correspondence across the canvas

Varnika-bhanga or color-pigment-analysis; requires knowledge how colors distribute on the canvas and how they visually impact the viewer.

 

These six limbs are arranged stylistically in two ways. First as a set of compound (Rupa-bhedah and Varnika-bhanda), a set of joining (middle two yojnam), and a set of single words (Pramanani and Sadrsyam). Second, states Victor Mair, the six limbs in this Hindu text are paired in a set of differentiation skills (first two), then a pair of aesthetic skills, and finally a pair of technical skills. These limbs parallel the 12th-century Six principles of Chinese painting of Xie He. {refn|group=note|The Hua Chi of Teng Ch'un, a 12th-century Chinese text, mentions the Buddhist temple of Nalanda with frescoes about the Buddha painted inside. It states that the Indian Buddhas look different from those painted by Chinese, as the Indian paintings have Buddha with larger eyes, their ears are curiously stretched and the Buddhas have their right shoulder bare. It then states that the artists first make a drawing of the picture, then paint a vermilion or gold colored base. It also mentions the use of ox-glue and a gum produced from peach trees and willow juice, with the artists preferring the latter. According to Coomaraswamy, the ox-glue in the Indian context mentioned in the Chinese text is probably the same as the recipe found in the Sanskrit text Silparatna, one where the base medium is produced from boiling buffalo skin in milk, followed by drying and blending process.

 

The six limbs in Jayamangala likely reflect the earliest and more established Hindu tradition for chitra. This is supported by the Chitrasutras found in the Vishnudharmottara Purana. They explicitly mention pramanani and lavanya as key elements of a painting, as well as discuss the other four of the six limbs in other sutras. The Chitrasutra chapters are likely from about the 4th or 5th-century. Numerous other Indian texts touch upon the elements or aspects of a chitra. For example, the Aparajitaprccha states that the essential elements of a painting are: citrabhumi (background), the rekha (lines, sketch), the varna (color), the vartana (shading), the bhusana (decoration) and the rasa (aesthetic experience).

 

THE PAINTER

The painter (chitrakara, rupakara) must master the fundamentals of measurement and proportions, state the historic chitra texts of India. According to these historic texts, the expert painter masters the skills in measurement, characteristics of subjects, attributes, form, relative proportion, ornament and beauty, states Isabella Nardi – a scholar known for her studies on chitra text and traditions of India. According to the Chitrasutras, a skilled painter needs practice, and is one who is able to paint neck, hands, feet, ears of living beings without ornamentation, as well as paint water waves, flames, smoke, and garments as they get affected by the speed of wind. He paints all types of scenes, ranging from dharma, artha and kama. A painter observes, then remembers, repeating this process till his memory has all the details he needs to paint, states Silparatna. According to Sivatattva Ratnakara, he is well versed in sketching, astute with measurements, skilled in outlining (hastalekha), competent with colors, and ready to diligently mix and combine colors to create his chitra. The painter is a creative person, with an inner sense of rasa (aesthetics).

 

THE VIEWER

The painter should consider the diversity of viewers, states the Indian tradition of chitra. The experts and critics with much experience with paintings study the lines, shading and aesthetics, the uninitiated visitors and children enjoy the vibrancy of colors, while women tend to be attracted to the ornamentation of form and the emotions. A successful painter tends to captivate a variety of minds. A painter should remember that the visual and aesthetic impact of a painting triggers different responses in different audiences.

 

The Silparatna – a Sanskrit text on the arts, states that the painting should reflect its intended place and purpose. A theme suitable for a palace or gateway is different from that in a temple or the walls of a home. Scenes of wars, misery, death and suffering are not suitable paintings within homes, but these can be important in a chitrasala (museum with paintings). Auspicious paintings with beautiful colors such as those that cheer and enliven a room are better for homes, states Silparatna.

 

PRACITICE

According to the art historian Percy Brown, the painting tradition in India is ancient and the persuasive evidence are the oldest known murals at the Jogimara caves. The mention of chitra and related terms in the pre-Buddhist Vedic era texts, the chitra tradition is much older. It is very likely, states Brown, the pre-Buddhist structures had paintings in them. However, the primary building material in ancient India was wood, the colors were organic materials and natural pigments, which when combined with the tropical weather in India would naturally cause the painting to fade, damage and degrade over the centuries. It is not surprising, therefore, that sample paintings and historic evidence for chitra practice are unusual. The few notable surviving examples of chitra are found hidden in caves, where they would be naturally preserved a bit better, longer and would be somewhat protected from the destructive effects of wind, dust, water and biological processes.

Some notable, major surviving examples of historic paintings include:

 

Murals at Jogimara cave (eight panels of murals, with a Brahmi inscription, 2nd or 1st century BCE, Hindu), oldest known ceiling paintings in India in remote Ramgarh hills of northern Chhattisgarh, below on wall of this cave is a Brahmi inscription in Magadhi language about a girl named Devadasi and a boy named Devadina (either they were lovers and wrote a love-graffiti per one translation, or they were partners who together converted natural caves here into a theatre with painted walls per another translation)

 

Mural at Sitabhinji Group of Rock Shelters (c. 400 CE Ravanachhaya mural with an inscription, near a Shiva temple in remote Odisha, a non-religious painting), the oldest surviving example of a tempera painting in eastern states of India

 

Murals at Ajanta caves (Jataka tales, Buddhist), 5th-century CE, Maharashtra

Murals at Badami Cave Temples (Hindu), 6th-century CE, Karnataka (secular paintings along with one of the earliest known painting of a Hindu legend about Shiva and Parvati inside a Vaishnava cave)

Murals at Bagh caves (Hallisalasya dance, Buddhist or Hindu), Madhya Pradesh

Murals at Ellora caves (Flying vidyadharas, Jain), Maharashtra

Frescoes at Sittanavasal cave (Nature scenes likely representing places of Tirthankara sermons, Jain), Tamil Nadu

Frescoes at Thirunadhikkara cave temple (Flowers and a woman, likely a scene of puja offering to Ganesha, another of Vishnu, Hindu), Travancore region, Kerala-Tamil Nadu

Paintings at the Brihadisvara temple (Dancer, Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Manuscript paintings (numerous states such as Gujarat, Kashmir, Kerala, Odisha, Assam; also Nepal, Tibet; Buddhist, Jain, Hindu

Vijayanagara temples (Hindu), Karnataka

Chidambaram temple (Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Chitrachavadi (Hindu, a choultry–mandapa near Madurai with Ramayana frescoes)

Pahari paintings (Hindu), Himachal Pradesh and nearby regions

Rajput paintings (Hindu), Rajasthan

Deccan paintings (Hindu, Jain)

Kerala paintings (Hindu)

Telangana paintings (Hindu)

Mughal paintings (Indo-Islamic)

 

CONTEMPORARY CULTURE

Kalamkari (Hindu)

Pattas (Jain, Hindu)

 

WIKIPEDIA

Chitra, also spelled as Citra, is an Indian genre of art that includes painting, sketch and any art form of delineation. The earliest mention of the term Chitra in the context of painting or picture is found in some of the ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism and Pali texts of Buddhism

 

NOMENCLATURE

Chitra (IAST: Citra, चित्र) is a Sanskrit word that appears in the Vedic texts such as hymns 1.71.1 and 6.65.2 of the Rigveda. There, and other texts such as Vajasaneyi Samhita, Taittiriya Samhita, Satapatha Brahmana and Tandya Brahmana, Chitra means "excellent, clear, bright, colored, anything brightly colored that strikes the eye, brilliantly ornamented, extraordinary that evokes wonder". In the Mahabharata and the Harivamsa, it means "picture, sktech, dilineation", and is presented as a genre of kala (arts). Many texts generally dated to the post-4th-century BCE period, use the term Chitra in the sense of painting, and Chitrakara as a painter. For example, the Sanskrit grammarian Panini in verse 3.2.21 of his Astadhyayi highlights the word chitrakara in this sense. Halls and public spaces to display paintings are called chitrasalas, and the earliest known mention of these are found in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

 

A few Indian regional texts such as Kasyapa silpa refer to painting by others words. For example, abhasa – which literally means "semblance, shining forth", is used in Kasyapa-shilpa to mean as a broader category of painting, of which chitra is one of three types. The verses in section 4.4 of the Kasyapa-silpa state that there are three types of images – those which are immovable (walls, floor, terracota, stucco), movable, and those which are both movable-immovable (stone, wood, gems).[5] In each of these three, states Kasyapa-shipa, are three classes of expression – ardhacitra, citra, and citra-abhasa. Ardhacitra is an art form where a high relief is combined with painting and parts of the body is not seen (it appears to be emerging out of the canvas). The Citra is the form of picture artwork where the whole is represented with or without integrating a relief. Citrabhasha is the form where an image is represented on a canvas or wall with colors (painting). However, states Commaraswamy, the word Abhasa has other meanings depending on the context. For example, in Hindu texts on philosophy, it implies the "field of objective experience" in the sense of the intellectual image internalized by a person during a reading of a subject (such as an epic, tale or fiction), or one during a meditative spiritual experience.

 

In some Buddhist and Hindu texts on methods to prepare a manuscript (palm leaf) or a composition on a cloth, the terms lekhya and alekhya are also used in the context of a chitra. More specifically, alekhya is the space left while writing a manuscript leaf or cloth, where the artist aims to add a picture or painting to illustrate the text.

 

HISTORY

The earliest explicit reference to painting in an Indian text is found in verse 4.2 of the Maitri Upanishad where it uses the phrase citrabhittir or "like a painted wall". The Indian art of painting is also mention in a number of Buddhist Pali suttas, but with the modified spelling of Citta. This term is found in the context of either a painting, or painter, or painted-hall (citta-gara) in Majjhima Nikaya 1.127, Samyutta Nikaya 2.101 and 3.152, Vinaya 4.289 and others. Among the Jain texts, it is mentioned in Book 2 of the Acaranga Sutra as it explains that Jaina monk should not indulge in the pleasures of watching a painting.

 

The Kamasutra, broadly accepted to have been complete by about the 4th-century CE, recommends that the young man should surprise the girl he courts with gifts of color boxes and painted scrolls. The Viddhasalabhanjika – another Hindu kama- and kavya–text uses chitra-simile in verse 1.16, as "pictures painted by the god of love, with the brush of the mind and the canvas of the heart".

 

The nature of a chitra (painting), how the viewer's mind projects a two dimensional artwork into a three dimensional representation, is used by Asanga in Mahayana Sutralamkara – a 3rd to 5th-century Sanskrit text of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, to explain "non-existent imagination" as follows:

 

Just as in a picture painted according to rules, there are neither projections nor depressions and yet we see it in three dimensions, so in the non-existent imagination there is no phenomenal differentiation, and yet we behold it.

— Mahayana Sutralamkara 13.7, Translated in French by Sylvain Levi

 

According to Yoko Taniguchi and Michiyo Mori, the art of painting the caves at the c. 6th-century Buddhas of Bamiyan site in Afghanistan, destroyed by the Taliban Muslims in the late 1990s, were likely introduced to this region from India along with the literature on early Buddhism.

 

TEXTS

There are many important dedicated Indian treatises on chitra. Some of these are chapters within a larger encyclopedia-like text. These include:

 

Chitrasutras, chapters 35–43 within the Hindu text Vishnudharmottara Purana (the standard, and oft referred to text in the Indian tradition)

Chitralaksana of Nagnajit (a classic on classical painting, 5th-century CE or earlier making it the oldest known text on Indian painting; but the Sanskrit version has been lost, only version available is in Tibet and it states that it is a translation of a Sanskrit text)

Samarangana Sutradhara (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Aparajitaprccha (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Manasollasa (an encyclopedia, contains chapters on paintings)

Abhilashitartha chinatamani

Sivatatva ratnakara

Chitra Kaladruma

Silpa ratna

Narada silpa

Sarasvati silpa

Prajapati silpa

Kasyapa silpa

 

These and other texts on chitra not only discuss the theory and practice of painting, some of them include discussions on how to become a painter, the diversity and the impact of a chitra on viewers, of aesthetics, how the art of painting relates to other arts (kala), methods of preparing the canvas or wall, methods and recipes to make color pigments. For example, the 10th-century Chitra Kaladruma presents recipe for making red color paint from the resin of lac insects. Other colors for the historic frescoes found in India, such as those in the Ajanta Caves, were obtained from nature. They mention earthy and mineral (inorganic) colorants such as yellow and red ochre, orpigment, green celadonite and ultramarine blue (lapis lazuli). The use of organic colorants prepared per a recipe in these texts have been confirmed through residue analysis and modern chromatographic techniques.

 

THEORY

The Indian concepts of painting are described in a range of texts called the shilpa shastras. These typically begin by attributing this art to divine sources such as Vishvakarma and ancient rishis (sages) such as Narayana and Nagnajit, weaving some mythology, highlighting chitra as a means to express ideas and beauty along with other universal aspects, then proceed to discuss the theory and practice of painting, sketching and other related arts. Manuscripts of many these texts are found in India, while some are known to be lost but are found outside India such as in Tibet and Nepal. Among these are the Citrasutras in the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana manuscripts discovered in India, and the Citralaksana manuscript discovered in Tibet (lost in India). This theory include early Indian ideas on how to prepare a canvas or substrate, measurement, proportion, stance, color, shade, projection, the painting's interaction with light, the viewer, how to captivate the mind, and other ideas.

 

According to the historic Indian tradition, a successful and impactful painting and painter requires a knowledge of the subject – either mythology or real life, as well as a keen sense of observation and knowledge of nature, human behavior, dance, music, song and other arts. For example, section 3.2 of Visnudharmottara Purana discusses these requirements and the contextual knowledge needed in chitra and the artist who produces it. The Chitrasutras in the Vishnudharmottara Purana state that the sculpture and painting arts are related, with the phrase "as in Natya, so in Citra". This relationship links them in rasa (aesthetics) and as forms of expression.

 

THE PAINTING

A chitra is a form of expression and communication. According to Aparajitaprccha – a 12th-century text on arts and architecture, just like the water reflects the moon, a chitra reflects the world. It is a rupa (form) of how the painter sees or what the painter wants the viewer to observe or feel or experience.

 

A good painting is one that is alive, breathing, draws in and affects the viewer. It captivates the minds of viewers, despite their diversity. Installed in a sala (hall or room), it enlivens the space.

 

The ornaments of a painting are its lines, shading, decoration and colors, states the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana. It states that there are eight gunas (merits, features) of a chitra that the artist must focus on: posture; proportion; the use of the plumb line; charm; detail (how much and where); verisimilitude; kshaya (loss, foreshortening) and; vrddhi (gain). Among the dosas (demerits, faults) of a painting and related arts, states Chitrasutra, are lines that are weak or thick, absence of variety, errors in scale (oversized eyes, lips, cheeks), inconsistency across the canvas, deviations from the rules of proportion, improper posture or sentiment, and non-merging of colors.

 

LIMBS OF THE PAINTING

Two historical sets called "chitra anga", or "limbs of painting" are found in Indian texts. According to the Samarangana Sutradhara – an 11th-century Sanskrit text on Hindu architecture and arts, a painting has eight limbs:

 

Vartika – manufacture of brushes

Bhumibandhana – preparation of base, plaster, canvas

Rekhakarma – sketching

Varnakarma – coloring

Vartanakarma – shading

lekhakarana – outlining

Dvikakarma – second and final lining

Lepyakarma – final coating

 

According to Yashodhara's Jayamangala, a Sanskrit commentary on Kamasutra, there are sadanga (six limbs)[note 5] in the art of alekhyam and chitra (drawing and painting):

 

Rupa-bhedah, or form distinction; this requires a knowledge of characteristic marks, diversity, manifested forms that distinguish states of something in the same genus/class

Pramanani, or measure; requires knowledge of measurement and proportion rules (talamana)

Bhava yojanam, or emotion and its joining with other parts of the painting; requires understanding and representing the mood of the subject

Lavanya yojanam, or rasa, charm; requires understanding and representing the inner qualities of the subject

Sadrsyam, or resemblance; requires knowledge of visual correspondence across the canvas

Varnika-bhanga or color-pigment-analysis; requires knowledge how colors distribute on the canvas and how they visually impact the viewer.

 

These six limbs are arranged stylistically in two ways. First as a set of compound (Rupa-bhedah and Varnika-bhanda), a set of joining (middle two yojnam), and a set of single words (Pramanani and Sadrsyam). Second, states Victor Mair, the six limbs in this Hindu text are paired in a set of differentiation skills (first two), then a pair of aesthetic skills, and finally a pair of technical skills. These limbs parallel the 12th-century Six principles of Chinese painting of Xie He. {refn|group=note|The Hua Chi of Teng Ch'un, a 12th-century Chinese text, mentions the Buddhist temple of Nalanda with frescoes about the Buddha painted inside. It states that the Indian Buddhas look different from those painted by Chinese, as the Indian paintings have Buddha with larger eyes, their ears are curiously stretched and the Buddhas have their right shoulder bare. It then states that the artists first make a drawing of the picture, then paint a vermilion or gold colored base. It also mentions the use of ox-glue and a gum produced from peach trees and willow juice, with the artists preferring the latter. According to Coomaraswamy, the ox-glue in the Indian context mentioned in the Chinese text is probably the same as the recipe found in the Sanskrit text Silparatna, one where the base medium is produced from boiling buffalo skin in milk, followed by drying and blending process.

 

The six limbs in Jayamangala likely reflect the earliest and more established Hindu tradition for chitra. This is supported by the Chitrasutras found in the Vishnudharmottara Purana. They explicitly mention pramanani and lavanya as key elements of a painting, as well as discuss the other four of the six limbs in other sutras. The Chitrasutra chapters are likely from about the 4th or 5th-century. Numerous other Indian texts touch upon the elements or aspects of a chitra. For example, the Aparajitaprccha states that the essential elements of a painting are: citrabhumi (background), the rekha (lines, sketch), the varna (color), the vartana (shading), the bhusana (decoration) and the rasa (aesthetic experience).

 

THE PAINTER

The painter (chitrakara, rupakara) must master the fundamentals of measurement and proportions, state the historic chitra texts of India. According to these historic texts, the expert painter masters the skills in measurement, characteristics of subjects, attributes, form, relative proportion, ornament and beauty, states Isabella Nardi – a scholar known for her studies on chitra text and traditions of India. According to the Chitrasutras, a skilled painter needs practice, and is one who is able to paint neck, hands, feet, ears of living beings without ornamentation, as well as paint water waves, flames, smoke, and garments as they get affected by the speed of wind. He paints all types of scenes, ranging from dharma, artha and kama. A painter observes, then remembers, repeating this process till his memory has all the details he needs to paint, states Silparatna. According to Sivatattva Ratnakara, he is well versed in sketching, astute with measurements, skilled in outlining (hastalekha), competent with colors, and ready to diligently mix and combine colors to create his chitra. The painter is a creative person, with an inner sense of rasa (aesthetics).

 

THE VIEWER

The painter should consider the diversity of viewers, states the Indian tradition of chitra. The experts and critics with much experience with paintings study the lines, shading and aesthetics, the uninitiated visitors and children enjoy the vibrancy of colors, while women tend to be attracted to the ornamentation of form and the emotions. A successful painter tends to captivate a variety of minds. A painter should remember that the visual and aesthetic impact of a painting triggers different responses in different audiences.

 

The Silparatna – a Sanskrit text on the arts, states that the painting should reflect its intended place and purpose. A theme suitable for a palace or gateway is different from that in a temple or the walls of a home. Scenes of wars, misery, death and suffering are not suitable paintings within homes, but these can be important in a chitrasala (museum with paintings). Auspicious paintings with beautiful colors such as those that cheer and enliven a room are better for homes, states Silparatna.

 

PRACITICE

According to the art historian Percy Brown, the painting tradition in India is ancient and the persuasive evidence are the oldest known murals at the Jogimara caves. The mention of chitra and related terms in the pre-Buddhist Vedic era texts, the chitra tradition is much older. It is very likely, states Brown, the pre-Buddhist structures had paintings in them. However, the primary building material in ancient India was wood, the colors were organic materials and natural pigments, which when combined with the tropical weather in India would naturally cause the painting to fade, damage and degrade over the centuries. It is not surprising, therefore, that sample paintings and historic evidence for chitra practice are unusual. The few notable surviving examples of chitra are found hidden in caves, where they would be naturally preserved a bit better, longer and would be somewhat protected from the destructive effects of wind, dust, water and biological processes.

Some notable, major surviving examples of historic paintings include:

 

Murals at Jogimara cave (eight panels of murals, with a Brahmi inscription, 2nd or 1st century BCE, Hindu), oldest known ceiling paintings in India in remote Ramgarh hills of northern Chhattisgarh, below on wall of this cave is a Brahmi inscription in Magadhi language about a girl named Devadasi and a boy named Devadina (either they were lovers and wrote a love-graffiti per one translation, or they were partners who together converted natural caves here into a theatre with painted walls per another translation)

 

Mural at Sitabhinji Group of Rock Shelters (c. 400 CE Ravanachhaya mural with an inscription, near a Shiva temple in remote Odisha, a non-religious painting), the oldest surviving example of a tempera painting in eastern states of India

 

Murals at Ajanta caves (Jataka tales, Buddhist), 5th-century CE, Maharashtra

Murals at Badami Cave Temples (Hindu), 6th-century CE, Karnataka (secular paintings along with one of the earliest known painting of a Hindu legend about Shiva and Parvati inside a Vaishnava cave)

Murals at Bagh caves (Hallisalasya dance, Buddhist or Hindu), Madhya Pradesh

Murals at Ellora caves (Flying vidyadharas, Jain), Maharashtra

Frescoes at Sittanavasal cave (Nature scenes likely representing places of Tirthankara sermons, Jain), Tamil Nadu

Frescoes at Thirunadhikkara cave temple (Flowers and a woman, likely a scene of puja offering to Ganesha, another of Vishnu, Hindu), Travancore region, Kerala-Tamil Nadu

Paintings at the Brihadisvara temple (Dancer, Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Manuscript paintings (numerous states such as Gujarat, Kashmir, Kerala, Odisha, Assam; also Nepal, Tibet; Buddhist, Jain, Hindu

Vijayanagara temples (Hindu), Karnataka

Chidambaram temple (Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Chitrachavadi (Hindu, a choultry–mandapa near Madurai with Ramayana frescoes)

Pahari paintings (Hindu), Himachal Pradesh and nearby regions

Rajput paintings (Hindu), Rajasthan

Deccan paintings (Hindu, Jain)

Kerala paintings (Hindu)

Telangana paintings (Hindu)

Mughal paintings (Indo-Islamic)

 

CONTEMPORARY CULTURE

Kalamkari (Hindu)

Pattas (Jain, Hindu)

 

WIKIPEDIA

Chitra, also spelled as Citra, is an Indian genre of art that includes painting, sketch and any art form of delineation. The earliest mention of the term Chitra in the context of painting or picture is found in some of the ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism and Pali texts of Buddhism

 

NOMENCLATURE

Chitra (IAST: Citra, चित्र) is a Sanskrit word that appears in the Vedic texts such as hymns 1.71.1 and 6.65.2 of the Rigveda. There, and other texts such as Vajasaneyi Samhita, Taittiriya Samhita, Satapatha Brahmana and Tandya Brahmana, Chitra means "excellent, clear, bright, colored, anything brightly colored that strikes the eye, brilliantly ornamented, extraordinary that evokes wonder". In the Mahabharata and the Harivamsa, it means "picture, sktech, dilineation", and is presented as a genre of kala (arts). Many texts generally dated to the post-4th-century BCE period, use the term Chitra in the sense of painting, and Chitrakara as a painter. For example, the Sanskrit grammarian Panini in verse 3.2.21 of his Astadhyayi highlights the word chitrakara in this sense. Halls and public spaces to display paintings are called chitrasalas, and the earliest known mention of these are found in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

 

A few Indian regional texts such as Kasyapa silpa refer to painting by others words. For example, abhasa – which literally means "semblance, shining forth", is used in Kasyapa-shilpa to mean as a broader category of painting, of which chitra is one of three types. The verses in section 4.4 of the Kasyapa-silpa state that there are three types of images – those which are immovable (walls, floor, terracota, stucco), movable, and those which are both movable-immovable (stone, wood, gems).[5] In each of these three, states Kasyapa-shipa, are three classes of expression – ardhacitra, citra, and citra-abhasa. Ardhacitra is an art form where a high relief is combined with painting and parts of the body is not seen (it appears to be emerging out of the canvas). The Citra is the form of picture artwork where the whole is represented with or without integrating a relief. Citrabhasha is the form where an image is represented on a canvas or wall with colors (painting). However, states Commaraswamy, the word Abhasa has other meanings depending on the context. For example, in Hindu texts on philosophy, it implies the "field of objective experience" in the sense of the intellectual image internalized by a person during a reading of a subject (such as an epic, tale or fiction), or one during a meditative spiritual experience.

 

In some Buddhist and Hindu texts on methods to prepare a manuscript (palm leaf) or a composition on a cloth, the terms lekhya and alekhya are also used in the context of a chitra. More specifically, alekhya is the space left while writing a manuscript leaf or cloth, where the artist aims to add a picture or painting to illustrate the text.

 

HISTORY

The earliest explicit reference to painting in an Indian text is found in verse 4.2 of the Maitri Upanishad where it uses the phrase citrabhittir or "like a painted wall". The Indian art of painting is also mention in a number of Buddhist Pali suttas, but with the modified spelling of Citta. This term is found in the context of either a painting, or painter, or painted-hall (citta-gara) in Majjhima Nikaya 1.127, Samyutta Nikaya 2.101 and 3.152, Vinaya 4.289 and others. Among the Jain texts, it is mentioned in Book 2 of the Acaranga Sutra as it explains that Jaina monk should not indulge in the pleasures of watching a painting.

 

The Kamasutra, broadly accepted to have been complete by about the 4th-century CE, recommends that the young man should surprise the girl he courts with gifts of color boxes and painted scrolls. The Viddhasalabhanjika – another Hindu kama- and kavya–text uses chitra-simile in verse 1.16, as "pictures painted by the god of love, with the brush of the mind and the canvas of the heart".

 

The nature of a chitra (painting), how the viewer's mind projects a two dimensional artwork into a three dimensional representation, is used by Asanga in Mahayana Sutralamkara – a 3rd to 5th-century Sanskrit text of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, to explain "non-existent imagination" as follows:

 

Just as in a picture painted according to rules, there are neither projections nor depressions and yet we see it in three dimensions, so in the non-existent imagination there is no phenomenal differentiation, and yet we behold it.

— Mahayana Sutralamkara 13.7, Translated in French by Sylvain Levi

 

According to Yoko Taniguchi and Michiyo Mori, the art of painting the caves at the c. 6th-century Buddhas of Bamiyan site in Afghanistan, destroyed by the Taliban Muslims in the late 1990s, were likely introduced to this region from India along with the literature on early Buddhism.

 

TEXTS

There are many important dedicated Indian treatises on chitra. Some of these are chapters within a larger encyclopedia-like text. These include:

 

Chitrasutras, chapters 35–43 within the Hindu text Vishnudharmottara Purana (the standard, and oft referred to text in the Indian tradition)

Chitralaksana of Nagnajit (a classic on classical painting, 5th-century CE or earlier making it the oldest known text on Indian painting; but the Sanskrit version has been lost, only version available is in Tibet and it states that it is a translation of a Sanskrit text)

Samarangana Sutradhara (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Aparajitaprccha (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Manasollasa (an encyclopedia, contains chapters on paintings)

Abhilashitartha chinatamani

Sivatatva ratnakara

Chitra Kaladruma

Silpa ratna

Narada silpa

Sarasvati silpa

Prajapati silpa

Kasyapa silpa

 

These and other texts on chitra not only discuss the theory and practice of painting, some of them include discussions on how to become a painter, the diversity and the impact of a chitra on viewers, of aesthetics, how the art of painting relates to other arts (kala), methods of preparing the canvas or wall, methods and recipes to make color pigments. For example, the 10th-century Chitra Kaladruma presents recipe for making red color paint from the resin of lac insects. Other colors for the historic frescoes found in India, such as those in the Ajanta Caves, were obtained from nature. They mention earthy and mineral (inorganic) colorants such as yellow and red ochre, orpigment, green celadonite and ultramarine blue (lapis lazuli). The use of organic colorants prepared per a recipe in these texts have been confirmed through residue analysis and modern chromatographic techniques.

 

THEORY

The Indian concepts of painting are described in a range of texts called the shilpa shastras. These typically begin by attributing this art to divine sources such as Vishvakarma and ancient rishis (sages) such as Narayana and Nagnajit, weaving some mythology, highlighting chitra as a means to express ideas and beauty along with other universal aspects, then proceed to discuss the theory and practice of painting, sketching and other related arts. Manuscripts of many these texts are found in India, while some are known to be lost but are found outside India such as in Tibet and Nepal. Among these are the Citrasutras in the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana manuscripts discovered in India, and the Citralaksana manuscript discovered in Tibet (lost in India). This theory include early Indian ideas on how to prepare a canvas or substrate, measurement, proportion, stance, color, shade, projection, the painting's interaction with light, the viewer, how to captivate the mind, and other ideas.

 

According to the historic Indian tradition, a successful and impactful painting and painter requires a knowledge of the subject – either mythology or real life, as well as a keen sense of observation and knowledge of nature, human behavior, dance, music, song and other arts. For example, section 3.2 of Visnudharmottara Purana discusses these requirements and the contextual knowledge needed in chitra and the artist who produces it. The Chitrasutras in the Vishnudharmottara Purana state that the sculpture and painting arts are related, with the phrase "as in Natya, so in Citra". This relationship links them in rasa (aesthetics) and as forms of expression.

 

THE PAINTING

A chitra is a form of expression and communication. According to Aparajitaprccha – a 12th-century text on arts and architecture, just like the water reflects the moon, a chitra reflects the world. It is a rupa (form) of how the painter sees or what the painter wants the viewer to observe or feel or experience.

 

A good painting is one that is alive, breathing, draws in and affects the viewer. It captivates the minds of viewers, despite their diversity. Installed in a sala (hall or room), it enlivens the space.

 

The ornaments of a painting are its lines, shading, decoration and colors, states the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana. It states that there are eight gunas (merits, features) of a chitra that the artist must focus on: posture; proportion; the use of the plumb line; charm; detail (how much and where); verisimilitude; kshaya (loss, foreshortening) and; vrddhi (gain). Among the dosas (demerits, faults) of a painting and related arts, states Chitrasutra, are lines that are weak or thick, absence of variety, errors in scale (oversized eyes, lips, cheeks), inconsistency across the canvas, deviations from the rules of proportion, improper posture or sentiment, and non-merging of colors.

 

LIMBS OF THE PAINTING

Two historical sets called "chitra anga", or "limbs of painting" are found in Indian texts. According to the Samarangana Sutradhara – an 11th-century Sanskrit text on Hindu architecture and arts, a painting has eight limbs:

 

Vartika – manufacture of brushes

Bhumibandhana – preparation of base, plaster, canvas

Rekhakarma – sketching

Varnakarma – coloring

Vartanakarma – shading

lekhakarana – outlining

Dvikakarma – second and final lining

Lepyakarma – final coating

 

According to Yashodhara's Jayamangala, a Sanskrit commentary on Kamasutra, there are sadanga (six limbs)[note 5] in the art of alekhyam and chitra (drawing and painting):

 

Rupa-bhedah, or form distinction; this requires a knowledge of characteristic marks, diversity, manifested forms that distinguish states of something in the same genus/class

Pramanani, or measure; requires knowledge of measurement and proportion rules (talamana)

Bhava yojanam, or emotion and its joining with other parts of the painting; requires understanding and representing the mood of the subject

Lavanya yojanam, or rasa, charm; requires understanding and representing the inner qualities of the subject

Sadrsyam, or resemblance; requires knowledge of visual correspondence across the canvas

Varnika-bhanga or color-pigment-analysis; requires knowledge how colors distribute on the canvas and how they visually impact the viewer.

 

These six limbs are arranged stylistically in two ways. First as a set of compound (Rupa-bhedah and Varnika-bhanda), a set of joining (middle two yojnam), and a set of single words (Pramanani and Sadrsyam). Second, states Victor Mair, the six limbs in this Hindu text are paired in a set of differentiation skills (first two), then a pair of aesthetic skills, and finally a pair of technical skills. These limbs parallel the 12th-century Six principles of Chinese painting of Xie He. {refn|group=note|The Hua Chi of Teng Ch'un, a 12th-century Chinese text, mentions the Buddhist temple of Nalanda with frescoes about the Buddha painted inside. It states that the Indian Buddhas look different from those painted by Chinese, as the Indian paintings have Buddha with larger eyes, their ears are curiously stretched and the Buddhas have their right shoulder bare. It then states that the artists first make a drawing of the picture, then paint a vermilion or gold colored base. It also mentions the use of ox-glue and a gum produced from peach trees and willow juice, with the artists preferring the latter. According to Coomaraswamy, the ox-glue in the Indian context mentioned in the Chinese text is probably the same as the recipe found in the Sanskrit text Silparatna, one where the base medium is produced from boiling buffalo skin in milk, followed by drying and blending process.

 

The six limbs in Jayamangala likely reflect the earliest and more established Hindu tradition for chitra. This is supported by the Chitrasutras found in the Vishnudharmottara Purana. They explicitly mention pramanani and lavanya as key elements of a painting, as well as discuss the other four of the six limbs in other sutras. The Chitrasutra chapters are likely from about the 4th or 5th-century. Numerous other Indian texts touch upon the elements or aspects of a chitra. For example, the Aparajitaprccha states that the essential elements of a painting are: citrabhumi (background), the rekha (lines, sketch), the varna (color), the vartana (shading), the bhusana (decoration) and the rasa (aesthetic experience).

 

THE PAINTER

The painter (chitrakara, rupakara) must master the fundamentals of measurement and proportions, state the historic chitra texts of India. According to these historic texts, the expert painter masters the skills in measurement, characteristics of subjects, attributes, form, relative proportion, ornament and beauty, states Isabella Nardi – a scholar known for her studies on chitra text and traditions of India. According to the Chitrasutras, a skilled painter needs practice, and is one who is able to paint neck, hands, feet, ears of living beings without ornamentation, as well as paint water waves, flames, smoke, and garments as they get affected by the speed of wind. He paints all types of scenes, ranging from dharma, artha and kama. A painter observes, then remembers, repeating this process till his memory has all the details he needs to paint, states Silparatna. According to Sivatattva Ratnakara, he is well versed in sketching, astute with measurements, skilled in outlining (hastalekha), competent with colors, and ready to diligently mix and combine colors to create his chitra. The painter is a creative person, with an inner sense of rasa (aesthetics).

 

THE VIEWER

The painter should consider the diversity of viewers, states the Indian tradition of chitra. The experts and critics with much experience with paintings study the lines, shading and aesthetics, the uninitiated visitors and children enjoy the vibrancy of colors, while women tend to be attracted to the ornamentation of form and the emotions. A successful painter tends to captivate a variety of minds. A painter should remember that the visual and aesthetic impact of a painting triggers different responses in different audiences.

 

The Silparatna – a Sanskrit text on the arts, states that the painting should reflect its intended place and purpose. A theme suitable for a palace or gateway is different from that in a temple or the walls of a home. Scenes of wars, misery, death and suffering are not suitable paintings within homes, but these can be important in a chitrasala (museum with paintings). Auspicious paintings with beautiful colors such as those that cheer and enliven a room are better for homes, states Silparatna.

 

PRACITICE

According to the art historian Percy Brown, the painting tradition in India is ancient and the persuasive evidence are the oldest known murals at the Jogimara caves. The mention of chitra and related terms in the pre-Buddhist Vedic era texts, the chitra tradition is much older. It is very likely, states Brown, the pre-Buddhist structures had paintings in them. However, the primary building material in ancient India was wood, the colors were organic materials and natural pigments, which when combined with the tropical weather in India would naturally cause the painting to fade, damage and degrade over the centuries. It is not surprising, therefore, that sample paintings and historic evidence for chitra practice are unusual. The few notable surviving examples of chitra are found hidden in caves, where they would be naturally preserved a bit better, longer and would be somewhat protected from the destructive effects of wind, dust, water and biological processes.

Some notable, major surviving examples of historic paintings include:

 

Murals at Jogimara cave (eight panels of murals, with a Brahmi inscription, 2nd or 1st century BCE, Hindu), oldest known ceiling paintings in India in remote Ramgarh hills of northern Chhattisgarh, below on wall of this cave is a Brahmi inscription in Magadhi language about a girl named Devadasi and a boy named Devadina (either they were lovers and wrote a love-graffiti per one translation, or they were partners who together converted natural caves here into a theatre with painted walls per another translation)

 

Mural at Sitabhinji Group of Rock Shelters (c. 400 CE Ravanachhaya mural with an inscription, near a Shiva temple in remote Odisha, a non-religious painting), the oldest surviving example of a tempera painting in eastern states of India

 

Murals at Ajanta caves (Jataka tales, Buddhist), 5th-century CE, Maharashtra

Murals at Badami Cave Temples (Hindu), 6th-century CE, Karnataka (secular paintings along with one of the earliest known painting of a Hindu legend about Shiva and Parvati inside a Vaishnava cave)

Murals at Bagh caves (Hallisalasya dance, Buddhist or Hindu), Madhya Pradesh

Murals at Ellora caves (Flying vidyadharas, Jain), Maharashtra

Frescoes at Sittanavasal cave (Nature scenes likely representing places of Tirthankara sermons, Jain), Tamil Nadu

Frescoes at Thirunadhikkara cave temple (Flowers and a woman, likely a scene of puja offering to Ganesha, another of Vishnu, Hindu), Travancore region, Kerala-Tamil Nadu

Paintings at the Brihadisvara temple (Dancer, Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Manuscript paintings (numerous states such as Gujarat, Kashmir, Kerala, Odisha, Assam; also Nepal, Tibet; Buddhist, Jain, Hindu

Vijayanagara temples (Hindu), Karnataka

Chidambaram temple (Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Chitrachavadi (Hindu, a choultry–mandapa near Madurai with Ramayana frescoes)

Pahari paintings (Hindu), Himachal Pradesh and nearby regions

Rajput paintings (Hindu), Rajasthan

Deccan paintings (Hindu, Jain)

Kerala paintings (Hindu)

Telangana paintings (Hindu)

Mughal paintings (Indo-Islamic)

 

CONTEMPORARY CULTURE

Kalamkari (Hindu)

Pattas (Jain, Hindu)

 

WIKIPEDIA

Chitra, also spelled as Citra, is an Indian genre of art that includes painting, sketch and any art form of delineation. The earliest mention of the term Chitra in the context of painting or picture is found in some of the ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism and Pali texts of Buddhism

 

NOMENCLATURE

Chitra (IAST: Citra, चित्र) is a Sanskrit word that appears in the Vedic texts such as hymns 1.71.1 and 6.65.2 of the Rigveda. There, and other texts such as Vajasaneyi Samhita, Taittiriya Samhita, Satapatha Brahmana and Tandya Brahmana, Chitra means "excellent, clear, bright, colored, anything brightly colored that strikes the eye, brilliantly ornamented, extraordinary that evokes wonder". In the Mahabharata and the Harivamsa, it means "picture, sktech, dilineation", and is presented as a genre of kala (arts). Many texts generally dated to the post-4th-century BCE period, use the term Chitra in the sense of painting, and Chitrakara as a painter. For example, the Sanskrit grammarian Panini in verse 3.2.21 of his Astadhyayi highlights the word chitrakara in this sense. Halls and public spaces to display paintings are called chitrasalas, and the earliest known mention of these are found in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

 

A few Indian regional texts such as Kasyapa silpa refer to painting by others words. For example, abhasa – which literally means "semblance, shining forth", is used in Kasyapa-shilpa to mean as a broader category of painting, of which chitra is one of three types. The verses in section 4.4 of the Kasyapa-silpa state that there are three types of images – those which are immovable (walls, floor, terracota, stucco), movable, and those which are both movable-immovable (stone, wood, gems).[5] In each of these three, states Kasyapa-shipa, are three classes of expression – ardhacitra, citra, and citra-abhasa. Ardhacitra is an art form where a high relief is combined with painting and parts of the body is not seen (it appears to be emerging out of the canvas). The Citra is the form of picture artwork where the whole is represented with or without integrating a relief. Citrabhasha is the form where an image is represented on a canvas or wall with colors (painting). However, states Commaraswamy, the word Abhasa has other meanings depending on the context. For example, in Hindu texts on philosophy, it implies the "field of objective experience" in the sense of the intellectual image internalized by a person during a reading of a subject (such as an epic, tale or fiction), or one during a meditative spiritual experience.

 

In some Buddhist and Hindu texts on methods to prepare a manuscript (palm leaf) or a composition on a cloth, the terms lekhya and alekhya are also used in the context of a chitra. More specifically, alekhya is the space left while writing a manuscript leaf or cloth, where the artist aims to add a picture or painting to illustrate the text.

 

HISTORY

The earliest explicit reference to painting in an Indian text is found in verse 4.2 of the Maitri Upanishad where it uses the phrase citrabhittir or "like a painted wall". The Indian art of painting is also mention in a number of Buddhist Pali suttas, but with the modified spelling of Citta. This term is found in the context of either a painting, or painter, or painted-hall (citta-gara) in Majjhima Nikaya 1.127, Samyutta Nikaya 2.101 and 3.152, Vinaya 4.289 and others. Among the Jain texts, it is mentioned in Book 2 of the Acaranga Sutra as it explains that Jaina monk should not indulge in the pleasures of watching a painting.

 

The Kamasutra, broadly accepted to have been complete by about the 4th-century CE, recommends that the young man should surprise the girl he courts with gifts of color boxes and painted scrolls. The Viddhasalabhanjika – another Hindu kama- and kavya–text uses chitra-simile in verse 1.16, as "pictures painted by the god of love, with the brush of the mind and the canvas of the heart".

 

The nature of a chitra (painting), how the viewer's mind projects a two dimensional artwork into a three dimensional representation, is used by Asanga in Mahayana Sutralamkara – a 3rd to 5th-century Sanskrit text of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, to explain "non-existent imagination" as follows:

 

Just as in a picture painted according to rules, there are neither projections nor depressions and yet we see it in three dimensions, so in the non-existent imagination there is no phenomenal differentiation, and yet we behold it.

— Mahayana Sutralamkara 13.7, Translated in French by Sylvain Levi

 

According to Yoko Taniguchi and Michiyo Mori, the art of painting the caves at the c. 6th-century Buddhas of Bamiyan site in Afghanistan, destroyed by the Taliban Muslims in the late 1990s, were likely introduced to this region from India along with the literature on early Buddhism.

 

TEXTS

There are many important dedicated Indian treatises on chitra. Some of these are chapters within a larger encyclopedia-like text. These include:

 

Chitrasutras, chapters 35–43 within the Hindu text Vishnudharmottara Purana (the standard, and oft referred to text in the Indian tradition)

Chitralaksana of Nagnajit (a classic on classical painting, 5th-century CE or earlier making it the oldest known text on Indian painting; but the Sanskrit version has been lost, only version available is in Tibet and it states that it is a translation of a Sanskrit text)

Samarangana Sutradhara (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Aparajitaprccha (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Manasollasa (an encyclopedia, contains chapters on paintings)

Abhilashitartha chinatamani

Sivatatva ratnakara

Chitra Kaladruma

Silpa ratna

Narada silpa

Sarasvati silpa

Prajapati silpa

Kasyapa silpa

 

These and other texts on chitra not only discuss the theory and practice of painting, some of them include discussions on how to become a painter, the diversity and the impact of a chitra on viewers, of aesthetics, how the art of painting relates to other arts (kala), methods of preparing the canvas or wall, methods and recipes to make color pigments. For example, the 10th-century Chitra Kaladruma presents recipe for making red color paint from the resin of lac insects. Other colors for the historic frescoes found in India, such as those in the Ajanta Caves, were obtained from nature. They mention earthy and mineral (inorganic) colorants such as yellow and red ochre, orpigment, green celadonite and ultramarine blue (lapis lazuli). The use of organic colorants prepared per a recipe in these texts have been confirmed through residue analysis and modern chromatographic techniques.

 

THEORY

The Indian concepts of painting are described in a range of texts called the shilpa shastras. These typically begin by attributing this art to divine sources such as Vishvakarma and ancient rishis (sages) such as Narayana and Nagnajit, weaving some mythology, highlighting chitra as a means to express ideas and beauty along with other universal aspects, then proceed to discuss the theory and practice of painting, sketching and other related arts. Manuscripts of many these texts are found in India, while some are known to be lost but are found outside India such as in Tibet and Nepal. Among these are the Citrasutras in the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana manuscripts discovered in India, and the Citralaksana manuscript discovered in Tibet (lost in India). This theory include early Indian ideas on how to prepare a canvas or substrate, measurement, proportion, stance, color, shade, projection, the painting's interaction with light, the viewer, how to captivate the mind, and other ideas.

 

According to the historic Indian tradition, a successful and impactful painting and painter requires a knowledge of the subject – either mythology or real life, as well as a keen sense of observation and knowledge of nature, human behavior, dance, music, song and other arts. For example, section 3.2 of Visnudharmottara Purana discusses these requirements and the contextual knowledge needed in chitra and the artist who produces it. The Chitrasutras in the Vishnudharmottara Purana state that the sculpture and painting arts are related, with the phrase "as in Natya, so in Citra". This relationship links them in rasa (aesthetics) and as forms of expression.

 

THE PAINTING

A chitra is a form of expression and communication. According to Aparajitaprccha – a 12th-century text on arts and architecture, just like the water reflects the moon, a chitra reflects the world. It is a rupa (form) of how the painter sees or what the painter wants the viewer to observe or feel or experience.

 

A good painting is one that is alive, breathing, draws in and affects the viewer. It captivates the minds of viewers, despite their diversity. Installed in a sala (hall or room), it enlivens the space.

 

The ornaments of a painting are its lines, shading, decoration and colors, states the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana. It states that there are eight gunas (merits, features) of a chitra that the artist must focus on: posture; proportion; the use of the plumb line; charm; detail (how much and where); verisimilitude; kshaya (loss, foreshortening) and; vrddhi (gain). Among the dosas (demerits, faults) of a painting and related arts, states Chitrasutra, are lines that are weak or thick, absence of variety, errors in scale (oversized eyes, lips, cheeks), inconsistency across the canvas, deviations from the rules of proportion, improper posture or sentiment, and non-merging of colors.

 

LIMBS OF THE PAINTING

Two historical sets called "chitra anga", or "limbs of painting" are found in Indian texts. According to the Samarangana Sutradhara – an 11th-century Sanskrit text on Hindu architecture and arts, a painting has eight limbs:

 

Vartika – manufacture of brushes

Bhumibandhana – preparation of base, plaster, canvas

Rekhakarma – sketching

Varnakarma – coloring

Vartanakarma – shading

lekhakarana – outlining

Dvikakarma – second and final lining

Lepyakarma – final coating

 

According to Yashodhara's Jayamangala, a Sanskrit commentary on Kamasutra, there are sadanga (six limbs)[note 5] in the art of alekhyam and chitra (drawing and painting):

 

Rupa-bhedah, or form distinction; this requires a knowledge of characteristic marks, diversity, manifested forms that distinguish states of something in the same genus/class

Pramanani, or measure; requires knowledge of measurement and proportion rules (talamana)

Bhava yojanam, or emotion and its joining with other parts of the painting; requires understanding and representing the mood of the subject

Lavanya yojanam, or rasa, charm; requires understanding and representing the inner qualities of the subject

Sadrsyam, or resemblance; requires knowledge of visual correspondence across the canvas

Varnika-bhanga or color-pigment-analysis; requires knowledge how colors distribute on the canvas and how they visually impact the viewer.

 

These six limbs are arranged stylistically in two ways. First as a set of compound (Rupa-bhedah and Varnika-bhanda), a set of joining (middle two yojnam), and a set of single words (Pramanani and Sadrsyam). Second, states Victor Mair, the six limbs in this Hindu text are paired in a set of differentiation skills (first two), then a pair of aesthetic skills, and finally a pair of technical skills. These limbs parallel the 12th-century Six principles of Chinese painting of Xie He. {refn|group=note|The Hua Chi of Teng Ch'un, a 12th-century Chinese text, mentions the Buddhist temple of Nalanda with frescoes about the Buddha painted inside. It states that the Indian Buddhas look different from those painted by Chinese, as the Indian paintings have Buddha with larger eyes, their ears are curiously stretched and the Buddhas have their right shoulder bare. It then states that the artists first make a drawing of the picture, then paint a vermilion or gold colored base. It also mentions the use of ox-glue and a gum produced from peach trees and willow juice, with the artists preferring the latter. According to Coomaraswamy, the ox-glue in the Indian context mentioned in the Chinese text is probably the same as the recipe found in the Sanskrit text Silparatna, one where the base medium is produced from boiling buffalo skin in milk, followed by drying and blending process.

 

The six limbs in Jayamangala likely reflect the earliest and more established Hindu tradition for chitra. This is supported by the Chitrasutras found in the Vishnudharmottara Purana. They explicitly mention pramanani and lavanya as key elements of a painting, as well as discuss the other four of the six limbs in other sutras. The Chitrasutra chapters are likely from about the 4th or 5th-century. Numerous other Indian texts touch upon the elements or aspects of a chitra. For example, the Aparajitaprccha states that the essential elements of a painting are: citrabhumi (background), the rekha (lines, sketch), the varna (color), the vartana (shading), the bhusana (decoration) and the rasa (aesthetic experience).

 

THE PAINTER

The painter (chitrakara, rupakara) must master the fundamentals of measurement and proportions, state the historic chitra texts of India. According to these historic texts, the expert painter masters the skills in measurement, characteristics of subjects, attributes, form, relative proportion, ornament and beauty, states Isabella Nardi – a scholar known for her studies on chitra text and traditions of India. According to the Chitrasutras, a skilled painter needs practice, and is one who is able to paint neck, hands, feet, ears of living beings without ornamentation, as well as paint water waves, flames, smoke, and garments as they get affected by the speed of wind. He paints all types of scenes, ranging from dharma, artha and kama. A painter observes, then remembers, repeating this process till his memory has all the details he needs to paint, states Silparatna. According to Sivatattva Ratnakara, he is well versed in sketching, astute with measurements, skilled in outlining (hastalekha), competent with colors, and ready to diligently mix and combine colors to create his chitra. The painter is a creative person, with an inner sense of rasa (aesthetics).

 

THE VIEWER

The painter should consider the diversity of viewers, states the Indian tradition of chitra. The experts and critics with much experience with paintings study the lines, shading and aesthetics, the uninitiated visitors and children enjoy the vibrancy of colors, while women tend to be attracted to the ornamentation of form and the emotions. A successful painter tends to captivate a variety of minds. A painter should remember that the visual and aesthetic impact of a painting triggers different responses in different audiences.

 

The Silparatna – a Sanskrit text on the arts, states that the painting should reflect its intended place and purpose. A theme suitable for a palace or gateway is different from that in a temple or the walls of a home. Scenes of wars, misery, death and suffering are not suitable paintings within homes, but these can be important in a chitrasala (museum with paintings). Auspicious paintings with beautiful colors such as those that cheer and enliven a room are better for homes, states Silparatna.

 

PRACITICE

According to the art historian Percy Brown, the painting tradition in India is ancient and the persuasive evidence are the oldest known murals at the Jogimara caves. The mention of chitra and related terms in the pre-Buddhist Vedic era texts, the chitra tradition is much older. It is very likely, states Brown, the pre-Buddhist structures had paintings in them. However, the primary building material in ancient India was wood, the colors were organic materials and natural pigments, which when combined with the tropical weather in India would naturally cause the painting to fade, damage and degrade over the centuries. It is not surprising, therefore, that sample paintings and historic evidence for chitra practice are unusual. The few notable surviving examples of chitra are found hidden in caves, where they would be naturally preserved a bit better, longer and would be somewhat protected from the destructive effects of wind, dust, water and biological processes.

Some notable, major surviving examples of historic paintings include:

 

Murals at Jogimara cave (eight panels of murals, with a Brahmi inscription, 2nd or 1st century BCE, Hindu), oldest known ceiling paintings in India in remote Ramgarh hills of northern Chhattisgarh, below on wall of this cave is a Brahmi inscription in Magadhi language about a girl named Devadasi and a boy named Devadina (either they were lovers and wrote a love-graffiti per one translation, or they were partners who together converted natural caves here into a theatre with painted walls per another translation)

 

Mural at Sitabhinji Group of Rock Shelters (c. 400 CE Ravanachhaya mural with an inscription, near a Shiva temple in remote Odisha, a non-religious painting), the oldest surviving example of a tempera painting in eastern states of India

 

Murals at Ajanta caves (Jataka tales, Buddhist), 5th-century CE, Maharashtra

Murals at Badami Cave Temples (Hindu), 6th-century CE, Karnataka (secular paintings along with one of the earliest known painting of a Hindu legend about Shiva and Parvati inside a Vaishnava cave)

Murals at Bagh caves (Hallisalasya dance, Buddhist or Hindu), Madhya Pradesh

Murals at Ellora caves (Flying vidyadharas, Jain), Maharashtra

Frescoes at Sittanavasal cave (Nature scenes likely representing places of Tirthankara sermons, Jain), Tamil Nadu

Frescoes at Thirunadhikkara cave temple (Flowers and a woman, likely a scene of puja offering to Ganesha, another of Vishnu, Hindu), Travancore region, Kerala-Tamil Nadu

Paintings at the Brihadisvara temple (Dancer, Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Manuscript paintings (numerous states such as Gujarat, Kashmir, Kerala, Odisha, Assam; also Nepal, Tibet; Buddhist, Jain, Hindu

Vijayanagara temples (Hindu), Karnataka

Chidambaram temple (Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Chitrachavadi (Hindu, a choultry–mandapa near Madurai with Ramayana frescoes)

Pahari paintings (Hindu), Himachal Pradesh and nearby regions

Rajput paintings (Hindu), Rajasthan

Deccan paintings (Hindu, Jain)

Kerala paintings (Hindu)

Telangana paintings (Hindu)

Mughal paintings (Indo-Islamic)

 

CONTEMPORARY CULTURE

Kalamkari (Hindu)

Pattas (Jain, Hindu)

 

WIKIPEDIA

While wandering around taking photos, I happened to notice a group of about 20 people out at the edge of the Great Lawn -- equipped with hoops and batons and ropes and various other odds and ends. More people trickled in to join the group, and each newcomer was welcomed with wild abandon ...

 

I had no idea what was going on, and finally decided to walk over to the group and ask someone. They explained that they were a competitive group of "spinners" (aka jugglers, twirlers, etc.) and that they regularly met on MIT's Great Lawn each Monday evening.

 

"Oh, so you're not MIT students," I said to them.

 

"Well, we're not," the fellow in the pink shirt admitted. "But I think some of our members in the past have been MIT students."

 

"Yeah," said one of the other fellows. "Why not? It's all just physics."

 

I had no idea what he meant, and decided I should just leave them alone and take a few more pictures as they practiced their moves...

 

Note: this photo was published in a Sep 5, 2010 blog, titled "Sunday's Thought for the Day."

 

***********************

 

It was a lifetime ago that I stumbled off a Greyhound bus in downtown Boston, a clueless 17 year old kid with two suitcases that held all my worldly possessions. I dragged them out to the street (no roll-aboard suitcases in those ancient times), and asked a taxi driver to take me to an address in Cambridge that I had scribbled on a scrap of paper: 77 Massachusetts Ave.

 

"Aye," the driver muttered, in a dialect that never did become familiar during the next several years. "SebendySebenMassAve."

 

When he dropped me off, I noticed two things. First, enormous stone steps leading up to the entrance to an imposing granite building. And second, a long line of scraggly, sloppily-dressed young men stretching from the building's entrance down toward the street where the taxi had dropped me. Aha, I thought: I'm not the only one who forgot to fill out the official form requesting a dorm room.

 

Welcome to MIT.

 

I waited in line for two hours before being assigned temporarily, with two other equally absent-minded, newly-arrived MIT students, to sleep on mattresses in an East Campus dorm room that had initially been assigned as a "single" room to an understandably annoyed fellow from Cincinnati. One of the other temporary misfits, whom we immediately nicknamed "Filthy Pierre," had just arrived from Paris with nothing but one large, heavy duffel bag that he dragged into the room. Its contents consisted of miscellaneous telephone parts, which he dumped on the floor and kicked under the bed before wandering out of the room to explore Boston. (He had not showered in weeks, and he was eventually expelled for burning a cross on MIT's Great Lawn on Easter morning. But that's another story.)

 

Thus began my four-year experience at what many still consider America's premiere scientific/engineering university. That I survived and graduated is a minor miracle; and while I'll hint at the adventures along the way, in this Flickr set, you'll have to look elsewhere for the details...

 

I continued to live in Cambridge for a couple of years after I graduated; took a couple of graduate courses in AI and computer science, taught a couple summer MIT classes to innocent high school students (one of whom challenged me to write the value of pi on the blackboard, to 100 places, from memory - which I did), took full advantage of MIT's athletic facilities, and 25-cent Saturday-nite movies at Kresge auditorium, which always featured the enormously popular RoadRunner cartoons, and occasionally walked through the same halls and pathways that I had first explored as an overwhelmed undergraduate student. But then I got a new job, moved to New York City, got married, settled down, and began raising family. After that, I typically travelled to Boston two or three times a year on business trips, but never seemed to have time to come back to MIT for a casual visit.

 

But one of the advantages of a near-fanatical devotion to the hobby of photography is that you begin to appreciate that all of the experiences you internalized and took for granted need to be photographed -- for posterity, if nothing else. Some of my most vivid memories of MIT, which we took for granted - like the huge,red, neon, flashing/pulsating "Heinz 57" sign out on the northern edge of the (Briggs) athletic fields -- are gone. Some of the legendary professors and deans have died and commemorative plaques have been erected in their honor. And there's a whole lot of new stuff - mostly new buildings and laboratories, whose specific purpose is a mystery to me - that I just have to shrug and accept.

 

But the basic campus is still there. And the memories are just as vivid as they were, so many years ago. I can't say that I captured them all in this Flickr set; the photos were taken at sunset one evening, and dawn the following morning. But they'll give you an idea of what it was like, a long long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away ... and what it's still like today.

Read more about the project here:

tiffanygholar.blogspot.com/2008/08/doll-project.html

 

The Doll Project is a series of conceptual digital photographs that uses fashion dolls to embody the negative messages the media gives to young girls. Though it would not be fair to blame it all on Barbie, there have been many instances in which she has come dangerously close. I chose to use Barbie dolls because they are miniature mannequins, emblems of the fashion world writ small, a representation of our culture's impossible standards of beauty scaled to one sixth actual size. The little pink scale and How To Lose Weight book are both real Barbie accessories from the 1960s. They are recurring motifs in the pictures in the series, symbolizing the ongoing dissatisfaction many girls and women feel about their weight and body image. The dolls' names, Ana and Mia, are taken from internet neologisms coined by anorexic and bulimic girls who have formed online communities with the unfortunate purpose of encouraging each other in their disordered eating. With each passing era, Ana and Mia are younger and younger, and the physical ideal to which they aspire becomes more unattainable. They internalize the unrealistic expectations of a society that digitally manipulates images of women in fashion and beauty advertisements and value their own bodies only as objects for others to look at and desire.

 

Read more about the project here:

tiffanygholar.blogspot.com/2008/08/doll-project.html

 

Purchase prints here:

society6.com/TiffanyGholar

 

Buy the book on Amazon and Etsy.

Psychological resilience is defined as an individual's ability to successfully adapt to life tasks in the face of social disadvantage or other highly adverse conditions.Adversity and stress can come in the shape of family or relationship problems, health problems, or workplace and financial worries, among others. Resilience is the ability to bounce back from a negative experience with "competent functioning". Resilience is not a rare ability; in reality, it is found in the average individual and it can be learned and developed by virtually anyone. Resilience is a process, rather than a trait to be had. It is a process of individuation through a structured system with gradual discovery of personal and unique abilities. A common misconception is that resilient people are free from negative emotions or thoughts, and remain optimistic in most or all situations. To the contrary, resilient individuals have, through time, developed proper coping techniques that allow them to effectively and relatively easily navigate around or through crises. In other words, people who demonstrate resilience are people with optimistic attitudes and positive emotionality; they are, in practice, able to effectively counter negative emotions with positive emotions. Compare the pressures you face in a typical week with a few years ago: have they increased? Now think about the years ahead: are the pressures likely to keep growing? If you’re answering 'yes', this could be a good time to review and renew your strategies for resilience. Alan Heeks has many years’ experience of exploring how people can raise their wellbeing and resilience through contact with nature.Resilience is generally thought of as a "positive adaptation" after a stressful or adverse situation. When a person is "bombarded by daily stress, it disrupts their internal and external sense of balance, presenting challenges as well as opportunities." Resilience is the integrated adaptation of physical, mental and spiritual aspects in a set of "good or bad" circumstances, a coherent sense of self that is able to maintain normative developmental tasks that occur at various stages of life. The Children's Institute of the University of Rochester explains that "resilience research is focused on studying those who engage in life with hope and humor despite devastating losses". It is important to note that resilience is not only about overcoming a deeply stressful situation, but also coming out of the said situation with "competent functioning". Resiliency allows a person to rebound from adversity as a strengthened and more resourceful person. “One of the themes that emerges from these groups is that people feel increasingly depleted by everyday life and work, and it’s getting worse.

"There are many reasons for this, including the many hours spent with smartphones and screens, which mean that they are constantly overloaded with too much information, and alarming news from across the globe. Medical School quotes many research studies showing how long hours in front of screens put people in a continual state of alert, which makes it hard for them both to concentrate, and also to relax. An example of what we can learn from nature is composting: in woods, as in organic farms and gardens, the major source of future growth is waste, dead matter which can be transformed into nutrition for future growth.Resilience is generally thought of as a "positive adaptation" after a stressful or adverse situation.[8] When a person is "bombarded by daily stress, it disrupts their internal and external sense of balance, presenting challenges as well as opportunities." Resilience is the integrated adaptation of physical, mental and spiritual aspects in a set of "good or bad" circumstances, a coherent sense of self that is able to maintain normative developmental tasks that occur at various stages of life. The Children's Institute of the University of Rochester explains that "resilience research is focused on studying those who engage in life with hope and humor despite devastating losses". It is important to note that resilience is not only about overcoming a deeply stressful situation, but also coming out of the said situation with "competent functioning". Resiliency allows a person to rebound from adversity as a strengthened and more resourceful person. You could do the same: imagine recycling negative feelings and anxious thoughts, and using their energy to give you insights and growth. Another theme which emerges for some people at the wood is their concerns for the state of the world, climate change, and damage to the environment. Many people feel helpless about such problems, and simply stuff their worries down. Alan said: “I find that these deep, denied worries affect a lot of people, and sap their energy and resilience. We offer a range of processes, such as composting and deep ecology, to help people face these anxieties, and find a more positive outlook.” The way to positive change for the state of our world begins with dreams. He points out that dreams, in the sense of inspiring visions, and myths, in the sense of prevailing beliefs, have a huge influence in our world. It believes that the wisdom of Gaia, planet earth, can team up with the inventiveness of humans, to find solutions even to the current threats. The mega-crisis represents a mega-opportunity. You could look at it as a chance for humans to grow dramatically in resilience, and in their connection with Nature. We have to dare to dream: if we can at least carry a vision of the future we hope for, it starts to gather momentum.” He provides organic growth approaches for people and their work that help to build resilience. Jane has many years’ experience of working with mindfulness, deep ecology and other approaches to wellbeing, and is part of the Wisdom Tree team.Resilience is generally thought of as a "positive adaptation" after a stressful or adverse situation.[8] When a person is "bombarded by daily stress, it disrupts their internal and external sense of balance, presenting challenges as well as opportunities." Resilience is the integrated adaptation of physical, mental and spiritual aspects in a set of "good or bad" circumstances, a coherent sense of self that is able to maintain normative developmental tasks that occur at various stages of life.The Children's Institute of the University of Rochester explains that "resilience research is focused on studying those who engage in life with hope and humor despite devastating losses". It is important to note that resilience is not only about overcoming a deeply stressful situation, but also coming out of the said situation with "competent functioning". Resiliency allows a person to rebound from adversity as a strengthened and more resourceful person.Three notable bases for resilience, self-confidence, self-esteem and self-concept, all have roots in three different nervous systems—respectively, the somatic nervous system, the autonomic nervous system and the central nervous system. An emerging field in the study of resilience is the neurobiological basis of resilience to stress. For example, neuropeptide Y (NPY) and 5-Dehydroepiandrosterone (5-DHEA) are thought to limit the stress response by reducing sympathetic nervous system activation and protecting the brain from the potentially harmful effects of chronically elevated cortisol levels respectively. In addition, the relationship between social support and stress resilience is thought to be mediated by the oxytocin system's impact on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. "Resilience, conceptualized as a positive bio-psychological adaptation, has proven to be a useful theoretical context for understanding variables for predicting long-term health and well-being".There is some limited research that, like trauma, resilience is epigenetic—that is, it may be inherited—but the science behind this finding is preliminary.Studies show that there are several factors which develop and sustain a person's resilience: The ability to make realistic plans and being capable of taking the steps necessary to follow through with them

Confidence in one’s strengths and abilities

Communication and problem-solving skills

The ability to manage strong impulses and feelings

Resilience is negatively correlated with personality traits of neuroticism and negative emotionality, which represents tendencies to see and react to the world as threatening, problematic, and distressing, and to view oneself as vulnerable. Positive correlations stands with personality traits of openness and positive emotionality, that represents tendencies to engage and confront the world with confidence in success and a fair value to self-directedness.There is significant research found in scientific literature on the relationship between positive emotions and resilience. Studies show that maintaining positive emotions whilst facing adversity promote flexibility in thinking and problem solving. Positive emotions serve an important function in their ability to help an individual recover from stressful experiences and encounters. That being said, maintaining a positive emotionality aids in counteracting the physiological effects of negative emotions. It also facilitates adaptive coping, builds enduring social resources, and increases personal well-being. Formation of conscious perception and monitoring one's own socioemotional factors is considered as a stablity aspect of positive emotions.[citation needed] This is not to say that positive emotions are merely a by-product of resilience, but rather that feeling positive emotions during stressful experiences may have adaptive benefits in the coping process of the individual. Empirical evidence for this prediction arises from research on resilient individuals who have a propensity for coping strategies that concretely elicit positive emotions, such as benefit-finding and cognitive reappraisal, humor, optimism, and goal-directed problem-focused coping. Individuals who tend to approach problems with these methods of coping may strengthen their resistance to stress by allocating more access to these positive emotional resources.Social support from caring adults encouraged resilience among participants by providing them with access to conventional activities.Positive emotions not only have physical outcomes but also physiological ones. Some physiological outcomes caused by humor include improvements in immune system functioning and increases in levels of salivary immunoglobulin A, a vital system antibody, which serves as the body’s first line of defense in respiratory illnesses. Moreover, other health outcomes include faster injury recovery rate and lower readmission rates to hospitals for the elderly, and reductions in a patient’s stay in the hospital, among many other benefits. A study was done on positive emotions in trait-resilient individuals and the cardiovascular recovery rate following negative emotions felt by those individuals. The results of the study showed that trait-resilient individuals experiencing positive emotions had an acceleration in the speed in rebounding from cardiovascular activation initially generated by negative emotional arousal, i.e. heart rate and the like.A study was conducted among high achieving professionals who seek challenging situations that require resilience. Research has examined 13 high achievers from various professions, all of whom had experienced challenges in the workplace and negative life events over the course of their careers but who had also been recognized for their great achievements in their respective fields. Participants were interviewed about everyday life in the workplace as well as their experiences with resilience and thriving. The study found six main predictors of resilience: positive and proactive personality, experience and learning, sense of control, flexibility and adaptability, balance and perspective, and perceived social support. High achievers were also found to engage in many activities unrelated to their work such as engaging in hobbies, exercising, and organizing meetups with friends and loved ones. Several factors are found to modify the negative effects of adverse life situations. Many studies show that the primary factor is to have relationships that provide care and support, create love and trust, and offer encouragement, both within and outside the family. Additional factors are also associated with resilience, like the capacity to make realistic plans, having self-confidence and a positive self image,developing communications skills, and the capacity to manage strong feelings and impulses. Temperamental and constitutional disposition is considered as a major factor in resilience. It is one of the necessary precursors of resilience along with warmth in family cohesion and accessibility of prosocial support systems. There are three kinds of temperamental systems that play part in resilience, they are the appetitive system, defensive system and attentional system. Another protective factor is related to moderating the negative effects of environmental hazards or a stressful situation in order to direct vulnerable individuals to optimistic paths, such as external social support. More specifically a 1995 study distinguished three contexts for protective factors:personal attributes, including outgoing, bright, and positive self-concepts; the family, such as having close bonds with at least one family member or an emotionally stable parent; and the community, such as receiving support or counsel from peers. Furthermore, a study of the elderly in Zurich, Switzerland, illuminated the role humor plays as a coping mechanism to maintain a state of happiness in the face of age-related adversity. Besides the above distinction on resilience, research has also been devoted to discovering the individual differences in resilience. Self-esteem, ego-control, and ego-resiliency are related to behavioral adaptation. For example, maltreated children who feel good about themselves may process risk situations differently by attributing different reasons to the environments they experience and, thereby, avoid producing negative internalized self-perceptions. Ego-control is "the threshold or operating characteristics of an individual with regard to the expression or containment"[49] of their impulses, feelings, and desires. Ego-resilience refers to "dynamic capacity, to modify his or her model level of ego-control, in either direction, as a function of the demand characteristics of the environmental context"Maltreated children who experienced some risk factors (e.g., single parenting, limited maternal education, or family unemployment), showed lower ego-resilience and intelligence than nonmaltreated children. Furthermore, maltreated children are more likely than nonmaltreated children to demonstrate disruptive-aggressive, withdraw, and internalized behavior problems. Finally, ego-resiliency, and positive self-esteem were predictors of competent adaptation in the maltreated children. Demographic information (e.g., gender) and resources (e.g., social support) are also used to predict resilience. Examining people's adaptation after disaster showed women were associated with less likelihood of resilience than men. Also, individuals who were less involved in affinity groups and organisations showed less resilience.

Certain aspects of religions and spirituality may, hypothetically, promote or hinder certain psychological virtues that increase resilience. Research has not established connection between spirituality and resilience. According to the 4th edition of Psychology of Religion by Hood, et al., the "study of positive psychology is a relatively new development...there has not yet been much direct empirical research looking specifically at the association of religion and ordinary strengths and virtues".In a review of the literature on the relationship between religiosity/spirituality and PTSD, amongst the significant findings, about half of the studies showed a positive relationship and half showed a negative relationship between measures of religiosity/spirituality and resilience. The United States Army has received criticism for promoting spirituality in its new [Comprehensive Soldier Fitness] program as a way to prevent PTSD, due to the lack of conclusive supporting data. In military studies it has been found that resilience is also dependent on group support: unit cohesion and morale is the best predictor of combat resiliency within a unit or organization. Resilience is highly correlated to peer support and group cohesion. Units with high cohesion tend to experience a lower rate of psychological breakdowns than units with low cohesion and morale. High cohesion and morale enhance adaptive stress reactions.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_resilience

Chitra, also spelled as Citra, is an Indian genre of art that includes painting, sketch and any art form of delineation. The earliest mention of the term Chitra in the context of painting or picture is found in some of the ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism and Pali texts of Buddhism

 

NOMENCLATURE

Chitra (IAST: Citra, चित्र) is a Sanskrit word that appears in the Vedic texts such as hymns 1.71.1 and 6.65.2 of the Rigveda. There, and other texts such as Vajasaneyi Samhita, Taittiriya Samhita, Satapatha Brahmana and Tandya Brahmana, Chitra means "excellent, clear, bright, colored, anything brightly colored that strikes the eye, brilliantly ornamented, extraordinary that evokes wonder". In the Mahabharata and the Harivamsa, it means "picture, sktech, dilineation", and is presented as a genre of kala (arts). Many texts generally dated to the post-4th-century BCE period, use the term Chitra in the sense of painting, and Chitrakara as a painter. For example, the Sanskrit grammarian Panini in verse 3.2.21 of his Astadhyayi highlights the word chitrakara in this sense. Halls and public spaces to display paintings are called chitrasalas, and the earliest known mention of these are found in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

 

A few Indian regional texts such as Kasyapa silpa refer to painting by others words. For example, abhasa – which literally means "semblance, shining forth", is used in Kasyapa-shilpa to mean as a broader category of painting, of which chitra is one of three types. The verses in section 4.4 of the Kasyapa-silpa state that there are three types of images – those which are immovable (walls, floor, terracota, stucco), movable, and those which are both movable-immovable (stone, wood, gems).[5] In each of these three, states Kasyapa-shipa, are three classes of expression – ardhacitra, citra, and citra-abhasa. Ardhacitra is an art form where a high relief is combined with painting and parts of the body is not seen (it appears to be emerging out of the canvas). The Citra is the form of picture artwork where the whole is represented with or without integrating a relief. Citrabhasha is the form where an image is represented on a canvas or wall with colors (painting). However, states Commaraswamy, the word Abhasa has other meanings depending on the context. For example, in Hindu texts on philosophy, it implies the "field of objective experience" in the sense of the intellectual image internalized by a person during a reading of a subject (such as an epic, tale or fiction), or one during a meditative spiritual experience.

 

In some Buddhist and Hindu texts on methods to prepare a manuscript (palm leaf) or a composition on a cloth, the terms lekhya and alekhya are also used in the context of a chitra. More specifically, alekhya is the space left while writing a manuscript leaf or cloth, where the artist aims to add a picture or painting to illustrate the text.

 

HISTORY

The earliest explicit reference to painting in an Indian text is found in verse 4.2 of the Maitri Upanishad where it uses the phrase citrabhittir or "like a painted wall". The Indian art of painting is also mention in a number of Buddhist Pali suttas, but with the modified spelling of Citta. This term is found in the context of either a painting, or painter, or painted-hall (citta-gara) in Majjhima Nikaya 1.127, Samyutta Nikaya 2.101 and 3.152, Vinaya 4.289 and others. Among the Jain texts, it is mentioned in Book 2 of the Acaranga Sutra as it explains that Jaina monk should not indulge in the pleasures of watching a painting.

 

The Kamasutra, broadly accepted to have been complete by about the 4th-century CE, recommends that the young man should surprise the girl he courts with gifts of color boxes and painted scrolls. The Viddhasalabhanjika – another Hindu kama- and kavya–text uses chitra-simile in verse 1.16, as "pictures painted by the god of love, with the brush of the mind and the canvas of the heart".

 

The nature of a chitra (painting), how the viewer's mind projects a two dimensional artwork into a three dimensional representation, is used by Asanga in Mahayana Sutralamkara – a 3rd to 5th-century Sanskrit text of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, to explain "non-existent imagination" as follows:

 

Just as in a picture painted according to rules, there are neither projections nor depressions and yet we see it in three dimensions, so in the non-existent imagination there is no phenomenal differentiation, and yet we behold it.

— Mahayana Sutralamkara 13.7, Translated in French by Sylvain Levi

 

According to Yoko Taniguchi and Michiyo Mori, the art of painting the caves at the c. 6th-century Buddhas of Bamiyan site in Afghanistan, destroyed by the Taliban Muslims in the late 1990s, were likely introduced to this region from India along with the literature on early Buddhism.

 

TEXTS

There are many important dedicated Indian treatises on chitra. Some of these are chapters within a larger encyclopedia-like text. These include:

 

Chitrasutras, chapters 35–43 within the Hindu text Vishnudharmottara Purana (the standard, and oft referred to text in the Indian tradition)

Chitralaksana of Nagnajit (a classic on classical painting, 5th-century CE or earlier making it the oldest known text on Indian painting; but the Sanskrit version has been lost, only version available is in Tibet and it states that it is a translation of a Sanskrit text)

Samarangana Sutradhara (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Aparajitaprccha (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Manasollasa (an encyclopedia, contains chapters on paintings)

Abhilashitartha chinatamani

Sivatatva ratnakara

Chitra Kaladruma

Silpa ratna

Narada silpa

Sarasvati silpa

Prajapati silpa

Kasyapa silpa

 

These and other texts on chitra not only discuss the theory and practice of painting, some of them include discussions on how to become a painter, the diversity and the impact of a chitra on viewers, of aesthetics, how the art of painting relates to other arts (kala), methods of preparing the canvas or wall, methods and recipes to make color pigments. For example, the 10th-century Chitra Kaladruma presents recipe for making red color paint from the resin of lac insects. Other colors for the historic frescoes found in India, such as those in the Ajanta Caves, were obtained from nature. They mention earthy and mineral (inorganic) colorants such as yellow and red ochre, orpigment, green celadonite and ultramarine blue (lapis lazuli). The use of organic colorants prepared per a recipe in these texts have been confirmed through residue analysis and modern chromatographic techniques.

 

THEORY

The Indian concepts of painting are described in a range of texts called the shilpa shastras. These typically begin by attributing this art to divine sources such as Vishvakarma and ancient rishis (sages) such as Narayana and Nagnajit, weaving some mythology, highlighting chitra as a means to express ideas and beauty along with other universal aspects, then proceed to discuss the theory and practice of painting, sketching and other related arts. Manuscripts of many these texts are found in India, while some are known to be lost but are found outside India such as in Tibet and Nepal. Among these are the Citrasutras in the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana manuscripts discovered in India, and the Citralaksana manuscript discovered in Tibet (lost in India). This theory include early Indian ideas on how to prepare a canvas or substrate, measurement, proportion, stance, color, shade, projection, the painting's interaction with light, the viewer, how to captivate the mind, and other ideas.

 

According to the historic Indian tradition, a successful and impactful painting and painter requires a knowledge of the subject – either mythology or real life, as well as a keen sense of observation and knowledge of nature, human behavior, dance, music, song and other arts. For example, section 3.2 of Visnudharmottara Purana discusses these requirements and the contextual knowledge needed in chitra and the artist who produces it. The Chitrasutras in the Vishnudharmottara Purana state that the sculpture and painting arts are related, with the phrase "as in Natya, so in Citra". This relationship links them in rasa (aesthetics) and as forms of expression.

 

THE PAINTING

A chitra is a form of expression and communication. According to Aparajitaprccha – a 12th-century text on arts and architecture, just like the water reflects the moon, a chitra reflects the world. It is a rupa (form) of how the painter sees or what the painter wants the viewer to observe or feel or experience.

 

A good painting is one that is alive, breathing, draws in and affects the viewer. It captivates the minds of viewers, despite their diversity. Installed in a sala (hall or room), it enlivens the space.

 

The ornaments of a painting are its lines, shading, decoration and colors, states the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana. It states that there are eight gunas (merits, features) of a chitra that the artist must focus on: posture; proportion; the use of the plumb line; charm; detail (how much and where); verisimilitude; kshaya (loss, foreshortening) and; vrddhi (gain). Among the dosas (demerits, faults) of a painting and related arts, states Chitrasutra, are lines that are weak or thick, absence of variety, errors in scale (oversized eyes, lips, cheeks), inconsistency across the canvas, deviations from the rules of proportion, improper posture or sentiment, and non-merging of colors.

 

LIMBS OF THE PAINTING

Two historical sets called "chitra anga", or "limbs of painting" are found in Indian texts. According to the Samarangana Sutradhara – an 11th-century Sanskrit text on Hindu architecture and arts, a painting has eight limbs:

 

Vartika – manufacture of brushes

Bhumibandhana – preparation of base, plaster, canvas

Rekhakarma – sketching

Varnakarma – coloring

Vartanakarma – shading

lekhakarana – outlining

Dvikakarma – second and final lining

Lepyakarma – final coating

 

According to Yashodhara's Jayamangala, a Sanskrit commentary on Kamasutra, there are sadanga (six limbs)[note 5] in the art of alekhyam and chitra (drawing and painting):

 

Rupa-bhedah, or form distinction; this requires a knowledge of characteristic marks, diversity, manifested forms that distinguish states of something in the same genus/class

Pramanani, or measure; requires knowledge of measurement and proportion rules (talamana)

Bhava yojanam, or emotion and its joining with other parts of the painting; requires understanding and representing the mood of the subject

Lavanya yojanam, or rasa, charm; requires understanding and representing the inner qualities of the subject

Sadrsyam, or resemblance; requires knowledge of visual correspondence across the canvas

Varnika-bhanga or color-pigment-analysis; requires knowledge how colors distribute on the canvas and how they visually impact the viewer.

 

These six limbs are arranged stylistically in two ways. First as a set of compound (Rupa-bhedah and Varnika-bhanda), a set of joining (middle two yojnam), and a set of single words (Pramanani and Sadrsyam). Second, states Victor Mair, the six limbs in this Hindu text are paired in a set of differentiation skills (first two), then a pair of aesthetic skills, and finally a pair of technical skills. These limbs parallel the 12th-century Six principles of Chinese painting of Xie He. {refn|group=note|The Hua Chi of Teng Ch'un, a 12th-century Chinese text, mentions the Buddhist temple of Nalanda with frescoes about the Buddha painted inside. It states that the Indian Buddhas look different from those painted by Chinese, as the Indian paintings have Buddha with larger eyes, their ears are curiously stretched and the Buddhas have their right shoulder bare. It then states that the artists first make a drawing of the picture, then paint a vermilion or gold colored base. It also mentions the use of ox-glue and a gum produced from peach trees and willow juice, with the artists preferring the latter. According to Coomaraswamy, the ox-glue in the Indian context mentioned in the Chinese text is probably the same as the recipe found in the Sanskrit text Silparatna, one where the base medium is produced from boiling buffalo skin in milk, followed by drying and blending process.

 

The six limbs in Jayamangala likely reflect the earliest and more established Hindu tradition for chitra. This is supported by the Chitrasutras found in the Vishnudharmottara Purana. They explicitly mention pramanani and lavanya as key elements of a painting, as well as discuss the other four of the six limbs in other sutras. The Chitrasutra chapters are likely from about the 4th or 5th-century. Numerous other Indian texts touch upon the elements or aspects of a chitra. For example, the Aparajitaprccha states that the essential elements of a painting are: citrabhumi (background), the rekha (lines, sketch), the varna (color), the vartana (shading), the bhusana (decoration) and the rasa (aesthetic experience).

 

THE PAINTER

The painter (chitrakara, rupakara) must master the fundamentals of measurement and proportions, state the historic chitra texts of India. According to these historic texts, the expert painter masters the skills in measurement, characteristics of subjects, attributes, form, relative proportion, ornament and beauty, states Isabella Nardi – a scholar known for her studies on chitra text and traditions of India. According to the Chitrasutras, a skilled painter needs practice, and is one who is able to paint neck, hands, feet, ears of living beings without ornamentation, as well as paint water waves, flames, smoke, and garments as they get affected by the speed of wind. He paints all types of scenes, ranging from dharma, artha and kama. A painter observes, then remembers, repeating this process till his memory has all the details he needs to paint, states Silparatna. According to Sivatattva Ratnakara, he is well versed in sketching, astute with measurements, skilled in outlining (hastalekha), competent with colors, and ready to diligently mix and combine colors to create his chitra. The painter is a creative person, with an inner sense of rasa (aesthetics).

 

THE VIEWER

The painter should consider the diversity of viewers, states the Indian tradition of chitra. The experts and critics with much experience with paintings study the lines, shading and aesthetics, the uninitiated visitors and children enjoy the vibrancy of colors, while women tend to be attracted to the ornamentation of form and the emotions. A successful painter tends to captivate a variety of minds. A painter should remember that the visual and aesthetic impact of a painting triggers different responses in different audiences.

 

The Silparatna – a Sanskrit text on the arts, states that the painting should reflect its intended place and purpose. A theme suitable for a palace or gateway is different from that in a temple or the walls of a home. Scenes of wars, misery, death and suffering are not suitable paintings within homes, but these can be important in a chitrasala (museum with paintings). Auspicious paintings with beautiful colors such as those that cheer and enliven a room are better for homes, states Silparatna.

 

PRACITICE

According to the art historian Percy Brown, the painting tradition in India is ancient and the persuasive evidence are the oldest known murals at the Jogimara caves. The mention of chitra and related terms in the pre-Buddhist Vedic era texts, the chitra tradition is much older. It is very likely, states Brown, the pre-Buddhist structures had paintings in them. However, the primary building material in ancient India was wood, the colors were organic materials and natural pigments, which when combined with the tropical weather in India would naturally cause the painting to fade, damage and degrade over the centuries. It is not surprising, therefore, that sample paintings and historic evidence for chitra practice are unusual. The few notable surviving examples of chitra are found hidden in caves, where they would be naturally preserved a bit better, longer and would be somewhat protected from the destructive effects of wind, dust, water and biological processes.

Some notable, major surviving examples of historic paintings include:

 

Murals at Jogimara cave (eight panels of murals, with a Brahmi inscription, 2nd or 1st century BCE, Hindu), oldest known ceiling paintings in India in remote Ramgarh hills of northern Chhattisgarh, below on wall of this cave is a Brahmi inscription in Magadhi language about a girl named Devadasi and a boy named Devadina (either they were lovers and wrote a love-graffiti per one translation, or they were partners who together converted natural caves here into a theatre with painted walls per another translation)

 

Mural at Sitabhinji Group of Rock Shelters (c. 400 CE Ravanachhaya mural with an inscription, near a Shiva temple in remote Odisha, a non-religious painting), the oldest surviving example of a tempera painting in eastern states of India

 

Murals at Ajanta caves (Jataka tales, Buddhist), 5th-century CE, Maharashtra

Murals at Badami Cave Temples (Hindu), 6th-century CE, Karnataka (secular paintings along with one of the earliest known painting of a Hindu legend about Shiva and Parvati inside a Vaishnava cave)

Murals at Bagh caves (Hallisalasya dance, Buddhist or Hindu), Madhya Pradesh

Murals at Ellora caves (Flying vidyadharas, Jain), Maharashtra

Frescoes at Sittanavasal cave (Nature scenes likely representing places of Tirthankara sermons, Jain), Tamil Nadu

Frescoes at Thirunadhikkara cave temple (Flowers and a woman, likely a scene of puja offering to Ganesha, another of Vishnu, Hindu), Travancore region, Kerala-Tamil Nadu

Paintings at the Brihadisvara temple (Dancer, Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Manuscript paintings (numerous states such as Gujarat, Kashmir, Kerala, Odisha, Assam; also Nepal, Tibet; Buddhist, Jain, Hindu

Vijayanagara temples (Hindu), Karnataka

Chidambaram temple (Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Chitrachavadi (Hindu, a choultry–mandapa near Madurai with Ramayana frescoes)

Pahari paintings (Hindu), Himachal Pradesh and nearby regions

Rajput paintings (Hindu), Rajasthan

Deccan paintings (Hindu, Jain)

Kerala paintings (Hindu)

Telangana paintings (Hindu)

Mughal paintings (Indo-Islamic)

 

CONTEMPORARY CULTURE

Kalamkari (Hindu)

Pattas (Jain, Hindu)

 

WIKIPEDIA

Chitra, also spelled as Citra, is an Indian genre of art that includes painting, sketch and any art form of delineation. The earliest mention of the term Chitra in the context of painting or picture is found in some of the ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism and Pali texts of Buddhism

 

NOMENCLATURE

Chitra (IAST: Citra, चित्र) is a Sanskrit word that appears in the Vedic texts such as hymns 1.71.1 and 6.65.2 of the Rigveda. There, and other texts such as Vajasaneyi Samhita, Taittiriya Samhita, Satapatha Brahmana and Tandya Brahmana, Chitra means "excellent, clear, bright, colored, anything brightly colored that strikes the eye, brilliantly ornamented, extraordinary that evokes wonder". In the Mahabharata and the Harivamsa, it means "picture, sktech, dilineation", and is presented as a genre of kala (arts). Many texts generally dated to the post-4th-century BCE period, use the term Chitra in the sense of painting, and Chitrakara as a painter. For example, the Sanskrit grammarian Panini in verse 3.2.21 of his Astadhyayi highlights the word chitrakara in this sense. Halls and public spaces to display paintings are called chitrasalas, and the earliest known mention of these are found in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

 

A few Indian regional texts such as Kasyapa silpa refer to painting by others words. For example, abhasa – which literally means "semblance, shining forth", is used in Kasyapa-shilpa to mean as a broader category of painting, of which chitra is one of three types. The verses in section 4.4 of the Kasyapa-silpa state that there are three types of images – those which are immovable (walls, floor, terracota, stucco), movable, and those which are both movable-immovable (stone, wood, gems).[5] In each of these three, states Kasyapa-shipa, are three classes of expression – ardhacitra, citra, and citra-abhasa. Ardhacitra is an art form where a high relief is combined with painting and parts of the body is not seen (it appears to be emerging out of the canvas). The Citra is the form of picture artwork where the whole is represented with or without integrating a relief. Citrabhasha is the form where an image is represented on a canvas or wall with colors (painting). However, states Commaraswamy, the word Abhasa has other meanings depending on the context. For example, in Hindu texts on philosophy, it implies the "field of objective experience" in the sense of the intellectual image internalized by a person during a reading of a subject (such as an epic, tale or fiction), or one during a meditative spiritual experience.

 

In some Buddhist and Hindu texts on methods to prepare a manuscript (palm leaf) or a composition on a cloth, the terms lekhya and alekhya are also used in the context of a chitra. More specifically, alekhya is the space left while writing a manuscript leaf or cloth, where the artist aims to add a picture or painting to illustrate the text.

 

HISTORY

The earliest explicit reference to painting in an Indian text is found in verse 4.2 of the Maitri Upanishad where it uses the phrase citrabhittir or "like a painted wall". The Indian art of painting is also mention in a number of Buddhist Pali suttas, but with the modified spelling of Citta. This term is found in the context of either a painting, or painter, or painted-hall (citta-gara) in Majjhima Nikaya 1.127, Samyutta Nikaya 2.101 and 3.152, Vinaya 4.289 and others. Among the Jain texts, it is mentioned in Book 2 of the Acaranga Sutra as it explains that Jaina monk should not indulge in the pleasures of watching a painting.

 

The Kamasutra, broadly accepted to have been complete by about the 4th-century CE, recommends that the young man should surprise the girl he courts with gifts of color boxes and painted scrolls. The Viddhasalabhanjika – another Hindu kama- and kavya–text uses chitra-simile in verse 1.16, as "pictures painted by the god of love, with the brush of the mind and the canvas of the heart".

 

The nature of a chitra (painting), how the viewer's mind projects a two dimensional artwork into a three dimensional representation, is used by Asanga in Mahayana Sutralamkara – a 3rd to 5th-century Sanskrit text of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, to explain "non-existent imagination" as follows:

 

Just as in a picture painted according to rules, there are neither projections nor depressions and yet we see it in three dimensions, so in the non-existent imagination there is no phenomenal differentiation, and yet we behold it.

— Mahayana Sutralamkara 13.7, Translated in French by Sylvain Levi

 

According to Yoko Taniguchi and Michiyo Mori, the art of painting the caves at the c. 6th-century Buddhas of Bamiyan site in Afghanistan, destroyed by the Taliban Muslims in the late 1990s, were likely introduced to this region from India along with the literature on early Buddhism.

 

TEXTS

There are many important dedicated Indian treatises on chitra. Some of these are chapters within a larger encyclopedia-like text. These include:

 

Chitrasutras, chapters 35–43 within the Hindu text Vishnudharmottara Purana (the standard, and oft referred to text in the Indian tradition)

Chitralaksana of Nagnajit (a classic on classical painting, 5th-century CE or earlier making it the oldest known text on Indian painting; but the Sanskrit version has been lost, only version available is in Tibet and it states that it is a translation of a Sanskrit text)

Samarangana Sutradhara (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Aparajitaprccha (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Manasollasa (an encyclopedia, contains chapters on paintings)

Abhilashitartha chinatamani

Sivatatva ratnakara

Chitra Kaladruma

Silpa ratna

Narada silpa

Sarasvati silpa

Prajapati silpa

Kasyapa silpa

 

These and other texts on chitra not only discuss the theory and practice of painting, some of them include discussions on how to become a painter, the diversity and the impact of a chitra on viewers, of aesthetics, how the art of painting relates to other arts (kala), methods of preparing the canvas or wall, methods and recipes to make color pigments. For example, the 10th-century Chitra Kaladruma presents recipe for making red color paint from the resin of lac insects. Other colors for the historic frescoes found in India, such as those in the Ajanta Caves, were obtained from nature. They mention earthy and mineral (inorganic) colorants such as yellow and red ochre, orpigment, green celadonite and ultramarine blue (lapis lazuli). The use of organic colorants prepared per a recipe in these texts have been confirmed through residue analysis and modern chromatographic techniques.

 

THEORY

The Indian concepts of painting are described in a range of texts called the shilpa shastras. These typically begin by attributing this art to divine sources such as Vishvakarma and ancient rishis (sages) such as Narayana and Nagnajit, weaving some mythology, highlighting chitra as a means to express ideas and beauty along with other universal aspects, then proceed to discuss the theory and practice of painting, sketching and other related arts. Manuscripts of many these texts are found in India, while some are known to be lost but are found outside India such as in Tibet and Nepal. Among these are the Citrasutras in the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana manuscripts discovered in India, and the Citralaksana manuscript discovered in Tibet (lost in India). This theory include early Indian ideas on how to prepare a canvas or substrate, measurement, proportion, stance, color, shade, projection, the painting's interaction with light, the viewer, how to captivate the mind, and other ideas.

 

According to the historic Indian tradition, a successful and impactful painting and painter requires a knowledge of the subject – either mythology or real life, as well as a keen sense of observation and knowledge of nature, human behavior, dance, music, song and other arts. For example, section 3.2 of Visnudharmottara Purana discusses these requirements and the contextual knowledge needed in chitra and the artist who produces it. The Chitrasutras in the Vishnudharmottara Purana state that the sculpture and painting arts are related, with the phrase "as in Natya, so in Citra". This relationship links them in rasa (aesthetics) and as forms of expression.

 

THE PAINTING

A chitra is a form of expression and communication. According to Aparajitaprccha – a 12th-century text on arts and architecture, just like the water reflects the moon, a chitra reflects the world. It is a rupa (form) of how the painter sees or what the painter wants the viewer to observe or feel or experience.

 

A good painting is one that is alive, breathing, draws in and affects the viewer. It captivates the minds of viewers, despite their diversity. Installed in a sala (hall or room), it enlivens the space.

 

The ornaments of a painting are its lines, shading, decoration and colors, states the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana. It states that there are eight gunas (merits, features) of a chitra that the artist must focus on: posture; proportion; the use of the plumb line; charm; detail (how much and where); verisimilitude; kshaya (loss, foreshortening) and; vrddhi (gain). Among the dosas (demerits, faults) of a painting and related arts, states Chitrasutra, are lines that are weak or thick, absence of variety, errors in scale (oversized eyes, lips, cheeks), inconsistency across the canvas, deviations from the rules of proportion, improper posture or sentiment, and non-merging of colors.

 

LIMBS OF THE PAINTING

Two historical sets called "chitra anga", or "limbs of painting" are found in Indian texts. According to the Samarangana Sutradhara – an 11th-century Sanskrit text on Hindu architecture and arts, a painting has eight limbs:

 

Vartika – manufacture of brushes

Bhumibandhana – preparation of base, plaster, canvas

Rekhakarma – sketching

Varnakarma – coloring

Vartanakarma – shading

lekhakarana – outlining

Dvikakarma – second and final lining

Lepyakarma – final coating

 

According to Yashodhara's Jayamangala, a Sanskrit commentary on Kamasutra, there are sadanga (six limbs)[note 5] in the art of alekhyam and chitra (drawing and painting):

 

Rupa-bhedah, or form distinction; this requires a knowledge of characteristic marks, diversity, manifested forms that distinguish states of something in the same genus/class

Pramanani, or measure; requires knowledge of measurement and proportion rules (talamana)

Bhava yojanam, or emotion and its joining with other parts of the painting; requires understanding and representing the mood of the subject

Lavanya yojanam, or rasa, charm; requires understanding and representing the inner qualities of the subject

Sadrsyam, or resemblance; requires knowledge of visual correspondence across the canvas

Varnika-bhanga or color-pigment-analysis; requires knowledge how colors distribute on the canvas and how they visually impact the viewer.

 

These six limbs are arranged stylistically in two ways. First as a set of compound (Rupa-bhedah and Varnika-bhanda), a set of joining (middle two yojnam), and a set of single words (Pramanani and Sadrsyam). Second, states Victor Mair, the six limbs in this Hindu text are paired in a set of differentiation skills (first two), then a pair of aesthetic skills, and finally a pair of technical skills. These limbs parallel the 12th-century Six principles of Chinese painting of Xie He. {refn|group=note|The Hua Chi of Teng Ch'un, a 12th-century Chinese text, mentions the Buddhist temple of Nalanda with frescoes about the Buddha painted inside. It states that the Indian Buddhas look different from those painted by Chinese, as the Indian paintings have Buddha with larger eyes, their ears are curiously stretched and the Buddhas have their right shoulder bare. It then states that the artists first make a drawing of the picture, then paint a vermilion or gold colored base. It also mentions the use of ox-glue and a gum produced from peach trees and willow juice, with the artists preferring the latter. According to Coomaraswamy, the ox-glue in the Indian context mentioned in the Chinese text is probably the same as the recipe found in the Sanskrit text Silparatna, one where the base medium is produced from boiling buffalo skin in milk, followed by drying and blending process.

 

The six limbs in Jayamangala likely reflect the earliest and more established Hindu tradition for chitra. This is supported by the Chitrasutras found in the Vishnudharmottara Purana. They explicitly mention pramanani and lavanya as key elements of a painting, as well as discuss the other four of the six limbs in other sutras. The Chitrasutra chapters are likely from about the 4th or 5th-century. Numerous other Indian texts touch upon the elements or aspects of a chitra. For example, the Aparajitaprccha states that the essential elements of a painting are: citrabhumi (background), the rekha (lines, sketch), the varna (color), the vartana (shading), the bhusana (decoration) and the rasa (aesthetic experience).

 

THE PAINTER

The painter (chitrakara, rupakara) must master the fundamentals of measurement and proportions, state the historic chitra texts of India. According to these historic texts, the expert painter masters the skills in measurement, characteristics of subjects, attributes, form, relative proportion, ornament and beauty, states Isabella Nardi – a scholar known for her studies on chitra text and traditions of India. According to the Chitrasutras, a skilled painter needs practice, and is one who is able to paint neck, hands, feet, ears of living beings without ornamentation, as well as paint water waves, flames, smoke, and garments as they get affected by the speed of wind. He paints all types of scenes, ranging from dharma, artha and kama. A painter observes, then remembers, repeating this process till his memory has all the details he needs to paint, states Silparatna. According to Sivatattva Ratnakara, he is well versed in sketching, astute with measurements, skilled in outlining (hastalekha), competent with colors, and ready to diligently mix and combine colors to create his chitra. The painter is a creative person, with an inner sense of rasa (aesthetics).

 

THE VIEWER

The painter should consider the diversity of viewers, states the Indian tradition of chitra. The experts and critics with much experience with paintings study the lines, shading and aesthetics, the uninitiated visitors and children enjoy the vibrancy of colors, while women tend to be attracted to the ornamentation of form and the emotions. A successful painter tends to captivate a variety of minds. A painter should remember that the visual and aesthetic impact of a painting triggers different responses in different audiences.

 

The Silparatna – a Sanskrit text on the arts, states that the painting should reflect its intended place and purpose. A theme suitable for a palace or gateway is different from that in a temple or the walls of a home. Scenes of wars, misery, death and suffering are not suitable paintings within homes, but these can be important in a chitrasala (museum with paintings). Auspicious paintings with beautiful colors such as those that cheer and enliven a room are better for homes, states Silparatna.

 

PRACITICE

According to the art historian Percy Brown, the painting tradition in India is ancient and the persuasive evidence are the oldest known murals at the Jogimara caves. The mention of chitra and related terms in the pre-Buddhist Vedic era texts, the chitra tradition is much older. It is very likely, states Brown, the pre-Buddhist structures had paintings in them. However, the primary building material in ancient India was wood, the colors were organic materials and natural pigments, which when combined with the tropical weather in India would naturally cause the painting to fade, damage and degrade over the centuries. It is not surprising, therefore, that sample paintings and historic evidence for chitra practice are unusual. The few notable surviving examples of chitra are found hidden in caves, where they would be naturally preserved a bit better, longer and would be somewhat protected from the destructive effects of wind, dust, water and biological processes.

Some notable, major surviving examples of historic paintings include:

 

Murals at Jogimara cave (eight panels of murals, with a Brahmi inscription, 2nd or 1st century BCE, Hindu), oldest known ceiling paintings in India in remote Ramgarh hills of northern Chhattisgarh, below on wall of this cave is a Brahmi inscription in Magadhi language about a girl named Devadasi and a boy named Devadina (either they were lovers and wrote a love-graffiti per one translation, or they were partners who together converted natural caves here into a theatre with painted walls per another translation)

 

Mural at Sitabhinji Group of Rock Shelters (c. 400 CE Ravanachhaya mural with an inscription, near a Shiva temple in remote Odisha, a non-religious painting), the oldest surviving example of a tempera painting in eastern states of India

 

Murals at Ajanta caves (Jataka tales, Buddhist), 5th-century CE, Maharashtra

Murals at Badami Cave Temples (Hindu), 6th-century CE, Karnataka (secular paintings along with one of the earliest known painting of a Hindu legend about Shiva and Parvati inside a Vaishnava cave)

Murals at Bagh caves (Hallisalasya dance, Buddhist or Hindu), Madhya Pradesh

Murals at Ellora caves (Flying vidyadharas, Jain), Maharashtra

Frescoes at Sittanavasal cave (Nature scenes likely representing places of Tirthankara sermons, Jain), Tamil Nadu

Frescoes at Thirunadhikkara cave temple (Flowers and a woman, likely a scene of puja offering to Ganesha, another of Vishnu, Hindu), Travancore region, Kerala-Tamil Nadu

Paintings at the Brihadisvara temple (Dancer, Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Manuscript paintings (numerous states such as Gujarat, Kashmir, Kerala, Odisha, Assam; also Nepal, Tibet; Buddhist, Jain, Hindu

Vijayanagara temples (Hindu), Karnataka

Chidambaram temple (Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Chitrachavadi (Hindu, a choultry–mandapa near Madurai with Ramayana frescoes)

Pahari paintings (Hindu), Himachal Pradesh and nearby regions

Rajput paintings (Hindu), Rajasthan

Deccan paintings (Hindu, Jain)

Kerala paintings (Hindu)

Telangana paintings (Hindu)

Mughal paintings (Indo-Islamic)

 

CONTEMPORARY CULTURE

Kalamkari (Hindu)

Pattas (Jain, Hindu)

 

WIKIPEDIA

The Doll Project is a series of conceptual digital photographs that uses fashion dolls to embody the negative messages the media gives to young girls. Though it would not be fair to blame it all on Barbie, there have been many instances in which she has come dangerously close. I chose to use Barbie dolls because they are miniature mannequins, emblems of the fashion world writ small, a representation of our culture's impossible standards of beauty scaled to one sixth actual size. The little pink scale and How To Lose Weight book are both real Barbie accessories from the 1960s. They are recurring motifs in the pictures in the series, symbolizing the ongoing dissatisfaction many girls and women feel about their weight and body image. The dolls' names, Ana and Mia, are taken from internet neologisms coined by anorexic and bulimic girls who have formed online communities with the unfortunate purpose of encouraging each other in their disordered eating. With each passing era, Ana and Mia are younger and younger, and the physical ideal to which they aspire becomes more unattainable. They internalize the unrealistic expectations of a society that digitally manipulates images of women in fashion and beauty advertisements and value their own bodies only as objects for others to look at and desire.

 

Read more about the project here:

tiffanygholar.blogspot.com/2008/08/doll-project.html

 

Purchase prints here:

society6.com/TiffanyGholar

 

Buy the book on Amazon and Etsy.

"During the entire Lenten period, the Church offers us God’s Word with particular abundance. By meditating and internalizing the Word in order to live it every day, we learn a precious and irreplaceable form of prayer; by attentively listening to God, who continues to speak to our hearts, we nourish the itinerary of faith initiated on the day of our Baptism. Prayer also allows us to gain a new concept of time: without the perspective of eternity and transcendence, in fact, time simply directs our steps towards a horizon without a future. Instead, when we pray, we find time for God, to understand that his “words will not pass away” (cf. Mk 13: 31), to enter into that intimate communion with Him “that no one shall take from you” (Jn 16: 22), opening us to the hope that does not disappoint, eternal life."

 

- Pope Benedict XVI's Message for Lent 2011, which begins today.

 

Detail from a medieval window in All Saints North Street in York.

 

Chitra, also spelled as Citra, is an Indian genre of art that includes painting, sketch and any art form of delineation. The earliest mention of the term Chitra in the context of painting or picture is found in some of the ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism and Pali texts of Buddhism

 

NOMENCLATURE

Chitra (IAST: Citra, चित्र) is a Sanskrit word that appears in the Vedic texts such as hymns 1.71.1 and 6.65.2 of the Rigveda. There, and other texts such as Vajasaneyi Samhita, Taittiriya Samhita, Satapatha Brahmana and Tandya Brahmana, Chitra means "excellent, clear, bright, colored, anything brightly colored that strikes the eye, brilliantly ornamented, extraordinary that evokes wonder". In the Mahabharata and the Harivamsa, it means "picture, sktech, dilineation", and is presented as a genre of kala (arts). Many texts generally dated to the post-4th-century BCE period, use the term Chitra in the sense of painting, and Chitrakara as a painter. For example, the Sanskrit grammarian Panini in verse 3.2.21 of his Astadhyayi highlights the word chitrakara in this sense. Halls and public spaces to display paintings are called chitrasalas, and the earliest known mention of these are found in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

 

A few Indian regional texts such as Kasyapa silpa refer to painting by others words. For example, abhasa – which literally means "semblance, shining forth", is used in Kasyapa-shilpa to mean as a broader category of painting, of which chitra is one of three types. The verses in section 4.4 of the Kasyapa-silpa state that there are three types of images – those which are immovable (walls, floor, terracota, stucco), movable, and those which are both movable-immovable (stone, wood, gems).[5] In each of these three, states Kasyapa-shipa, are three classes of expression – ardhacitra, citra, and citra-abhasa. Ardhacitra is an art form where a high relief is combined with painting and parts of the body is not seen (it appears to be emerging out of the canvas). The Citra is the form of picture artwork where the whole is represented with or without integrating a relief. Citrabhasha is the form where an image is represented on a canvas or wall with colors (painting). However, states Commaraswamy, the word Abhasa has other meanings depending on the context. For example, in Hindu texts on philosophy, it implies the "field of objective experience" in the sense of the intellectual image internalized by a person during a reading of a subject (such as an epic, tale or fiction), or one during a meditative spiritual experience.

 

In some Buddhist and Hindu texts on methods to prepare a manuscript (palm leaf) or a composition on a cloth, the terms lekhya and alekhya are also used in the context of a chitra. More specifically, alekhya is the space left while writing a manuscript leaf or cloth, where the artist aims to add a picture or painting to illustrate the text.

 

HISTORY

The earliest explicit reference to painting in an Indian text is found in verse 4.2 of the Maitri Upanishad where it uses the phrase citrabhittir or "like a painted wall". The Indian art of painting is also mention in a number of Buddhist Pali suttas, but with the modified spelling of Citta. This term is found in the context of either a painting, or painter, or painted-hall (citta-gara) in Majjhima Nikaya 1.127, Samyutta Nikaya 2.101 and 3.152, Vinaya 4.289 and others. Among the Jain texts, it is mentioned in Book 2 of the Acaranga Sutra as it explains that Jaina monk should not indulge in the pleasures of watching a painting.

 

The Kamasutra, broadly accepted to have been complete by about the 4th-century CE, recommends that the young man should surprise the girl he courts with gifts of color boxes and painted scrolls. The Viddhasalabhanjika – another Hindu kama- and kavya–text uses chitra-simile in verse 1.16, as "pictures painted by the god of love, with the brush of the mind and the canvas of the heart".

 

The nature of a chitra (painting), how the viewer's mind projects a two dimensional artwork into a three dimensional representation, is used by Asanga in Mahayana Sutralamkara – a 3rd to 5th-century Sanskrit text of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, to explain "non-existent imagination" as follows:

 

Just as in a picture painted according to rules, there are neither projections nor depressions and yet we see it in three dimensions, so in the non-existent imagination there is no phenomenal differentiation, and yet we behold it.

— Mahayana Sutralamkara 13.7, Translated in French by Sylvain Levi

 

According to Yoko Taniguchi and Michiyo Mori, the art of painting the caves at the c. 6th-century Buddhas of Bamiyan site in Afghanistan, destroyed by the Taliban Muslims in the late 1990s, were likely introduced to this region from India along with the literature on early Buddhism.

 

TEXTS

There are many important dedicated Indian treatises on chitra. Some of these are chapters within a larger encyclopedia-like text. These include:

 

Chitrasutras, chapters 35–43 within the Hindu text Vishnudharmottara Purana (the standard, and oft referred to text in the Indian tradition)

Chitralaksana of Nagnajit (a classic on classical painting, 5th-century CE or earlier making it the oldest known text on Indian painting; but the Sanskrit version has been lost, only version available is in Tibet and it states that it is a translation of a Sanskrit text)

Samarangana Sutradhara (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Aparajitaprccha (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Manasollasa (an encyclopedia, contains chapters on paintings)

Abhilashitartha chinatamani

Sivatatva ratnakara

Chitra Kaladruma

Silpa ratna

Narada silpa

Sarasvati silpa

Prajapati silpa

Kasyapa silpa

 

These and other texts on chitra not only discuss the theory and practice of painting, some of them include discussions on how to become a painter, the diversity and the impact of a chitra on viewers, of aesthetics, how the art of painting relates to other arts (kala), methods of preparing the canvas or wall, methods and recipes to make color pigments. For example, the 10th-century Chitra Kaladruma presents recipe for making red color paint from the resin of lac insects. Other colors for the historic frescoes found in India, such as those in the Ajanta Caves, were obtained from nature. They mention earthy and mineral (inorganic) colorants such as yellow and red ochre, orpigment, green celadonite and ultramarine blue (lapis lazuli). The use of organic colorants prepared per a recipe in these texts have been confirmed through residue analysis and modern chromatographic techniques.

 

THEORY

The Indian concepts of painting are described in a range of texts called the shilpa shastras. These typically begin by attributing this art to divine sources such as Vishvakarma and ancient rishis (sages) such as Narayana and Nagnajit, weaving some mythology, highlighting chitra as a means to express ideas and beauty along with other universal aspects, then proceed to discuss the theory and practice of painting, sketching and other related arts. Manuscripts of many these texts are found in India, while some are known to be lost but are found outside India such as in Tibet and Nepal. Among these are the Citrasutras in the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana manuscripts discovered in India, and the Citralaksana manuscript discovered in Tibet (lost in India). This theory include early Indian ideas on how to prepare a canvas or substrate, measurement, proportion, stance, color, shade, projection, the painting's interaction with light, the viewer, how to captivate the mind, and other ideas.

 

According to the historic Indian tradition, a successful and impactful painting and painter requires a knowledge of the subject – either mythology or real life, as well as a keen sense of observation and knowledge of nature, human behavior, dance, music, song and other arts. For example, section 3.2 of Visnudharmottara Purana discusses these requirements and the contextual knowledge needed in chitra and the artist who produces it. The Chitrasutras in the Vishnudharmottara Purana state that the sculpture and painting arts are related, with the phrase "as in Natya, so in Citra". This relationship links them in rasa (aesthetics) and as forms of expression.

 

THE PAINTING

A chitra is a form of expression and communication. According to Aparajitaprccha – a 12th-century text on arts and architecture, just like the water reflects the moon, a chitra reflects the world. It is a rupa (form) of how the painter sees or what the painter wants the viewer to observe or feel or experience.

 

A good painting is one that is alive, breathing, draws in and affects the viewer. It captivates the minds of viewers, despite their diversity. Installed in a sala (hall or room), it enlivens the space.

 

The ornaments of a painting are its lines, shading, decoration and colors, states the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana. It states that there are eight gunas (merits, features) of a chitra that the artist must focus on: posture; proportion; the use of the plumb line; charm; detail (how much and where); verisimilitude; kshaya (loss, foreshortening) and; vrddhi (gain). Among the dosas (demerits, faults) of a painting and related arts, states Chitrasutra, are lines that are weak or thick, absence of variety, errors in scale (oversized eyes, lips, cheeks), inconsistency across the canvas, deviations from the rules of proportion, improper posture or sentiment, and non-merging of colors.

 

LIMBS OF THE PAINTING

Two historical sets called "chitra anga", or "limbs of painting" are found in Indian texts. According to the Samarangana Sutradhara – an 11th-century Sanskrit text on Hindu architecture and arts, a painting has eight limbs:

 

Vartika – manufacture of brushes

Bhumibandhana – preparation of base, plaster, canvas

Rekhakarma – sketching

Varnakarma – coloring

Vartanakarma – shading

lekhakarana – outlining

Dvikakarma – second and final lining

Lepyakarma – final coating

 

According to Yashodhara's Jayamangala, a Sanskrit commentary on Kamasutra, there are sadanga (six limbs)[note 5] in the art of alekhyam and chitra (drawing and painting):

 

Rupa-bhedah, or form distinction; this requires a knowledge of characteristic marks, diversity, manifested forms that distinguish states of something in the same genus/class

Pramanani, or measure; requires knowledge of measurement and proportion rules (talamana)

Bhava yojanam, or emotion and its joining with other parts of the painting; requires understanding and representing the mood of the subject

Lavanya yojanam, or rasa, charm; requires understanding and representing the inner qualities of the subject

Sadrsyam, or resemblance; requires knowledge of visual correspondence across the canvas

Varnika-bhanga or color-pigment-analysis; requires knowledge how colors distribute on the canvas and how they visually impact the viewer.

 

These six limbs are arranged stylistically in two ways. First as a set of compound (Rupa-bhedah and Varnika-bhanda), a set of joining (middle two yojnam), and a set of single words (Pramanani and Sadrsyam). Second, states Victor Mair, the six limbs in this Hindu text are paired in a set of differentiation skills (first two), then a pair of aesthetic skills, and finally a pair of technical skills. These limbs parallel the 12th-century Six principles of Chinese painting of Xie He. {refn|group=note|The Hua Chi of Teng Ch'un, a 12th-century Chinese text, mentions the Buddhist temple of Nalanda with frescoes about the Buddha painted inside. It states that the Indian Buddhas look different from those painted by Chinese, as the Indian paintings have Buddha with larger eyes, their ears are curiously stretched and the Buddhas have their right shoulder bare. It then states that the artists first make a drawing of the picture, then paint a vermilion or gold colored base. It also mentions the use of ox-glue and a gum produced from peach trees and willow juice, with the artists preferring the latter. According to Coomaraswamy, the ox-glue in the Indian context mentioned in the Chinese text is probably the same as the recipe found in the Sanskrit text Silparatna, one where the base medium is produced from boiling buffalo skin in milk, followed by drying and blending process.

 

The six limbs in Jayamangala likely reflect the earliest and more established Hindu tradition for chitra. This is supported by the Chitrasutras found in the Vishnudharmottara Purana. They explicitly mention pramanani and lavanya as key elements of a painting, as well as discuss the other four of the six limbs in other sutras. The Chitrasutra chapters are likely from about the 4th or 5th-century. Numerous other Indian texts touch upon the elements or aspects of a chitra. For example, the Aparajitaprccha states that the essential elements of a painting are: citrabhumi (background), the rekha (lines, sketch), the varna (color), the vartana (shading), the bhusana (decoration) and the rasa (aesthetic experience).

 

THE PAINTER

The painter (chitrakara, rupakara) must master the fundamentals of measurement and proportions, state the historic chitra texts of India. According to these historic texts, the expert painter masters the skills in measurement, characteristics of subjects, attributes, form, relative proportion, ornament and beauty, states Isabella Nardi – a scholar known for her studies on chitra text and traditions of India. According to the Chitrasutras, a skilled painter needs practice, and is one who is able to paint neck, hands, feet, ears of living beings without ornamentation, as well as paint water waves, flames, smoke, and garments as they get affected by the speed of wind. He paints all types of scenes, ranging from dharma, artha and kama. A painter observes, then remembers, repeating this process till his memory has all the details he needs to paint, states Silparatna. According to Sivatattva Ratnakara, he is well versed in sketching, astute with measurements, skilled in outlining (hastalekha), competent with colors, and ready to diligently mix and combine colors to create his chitra. The painter is a creative person, with an inner sense of rasa (aesthetics).

 

THE VIEWER

The painter should consider the diversity of viewers, states the Indian tradition of chitra. The experts and critics with much experience with paintings study the lines, shading and aesthetics, the uninitiated visitors and children enjoy the vibrancy of colors, while women tend to be attracted to the ornamentation of form and the emotions. A successful painter tends to captivate a variety of minds. A painter should remember that the visual and aesthetic impact of a painting triggers different responses in different audiences.

 

The Silparatna – a Sanskrit text on the arts, states that the painting should reflect its intended place and purpose. A theme suitable for a palace or gateway is different from that in a temple or the walls of a home. Scenes of wars, misery, death and suffering are not suitable paintings within homes, but these can be important in a chitrasala (museum with paintings). Auspicious paintings with beautiful colors such as those that cheer and enliven a room are better for homes, states Silparatna.

 

PRACITICE

According to the art historian Percy Brown, the painting tradition in India is ancient and the persuasive evidence are the oldest known murals at the Jogimara caves. The mention of chitra and related terms in the pre-Buddhist Vedic era texts, the chitra tradition is much older. It is very likely, states Brown, the pre-Buddhist structures had paintings in them. However, the primary building material in ancient India was wood, the colors were organic materials and natural pigments, which when combined with the tropical weather in India would naturally cause the painting to fade, damage and degrade over the centuries. It is not surprising, therefore, that sample paintings and historic evidence for chitra practice are unusual. The few notable surviving examples of chitra are found hidden in caves, where they would be naturally preserved a bit better, longer and would be somewhat protected from the destructive effects of wind, dust, water and biological processes.

Some notable, major surviving examples of historic paintings include:

 

Murals at Jogimara cave (eight panels of murals, with a Brahmi inscription, 2nd or 1st century BCE, Hindu), oldest known ceiling paintings in India in remote Ramgarh hills of northern Chhattisgarh, below on wall of this cave is a Brahmi inscription in Magadhi language about a girl named Devadasi and a boy named Devadina (either they were lovers and wrote a love-graffiti per one translation, or they were partners who together converted natural caves here into a theatre with painted walls per another translation)

 

Mural at Sitabhinji Group of Rock Shelters (c. 400 CE Ravanachhaya mural with an inscription, near a Shiva temple in remote Odisha, a non-religious painting), the oldest surviving example of a tempera painting in eastern states of India

 

Murals at Ajanta caves (Jataka tales, Buddhist), 5th-century CE, Maharashtra

Murals at Badami Cave Temples (Hindu), 6th-century CE, Karnataka (secular paintings along with one of the earliest known painting of a Hindu legend about Shiva and Parvati inside a Vaishnava cave)

Murals at Bagh caves (Hallisalasya dance, Buddhist or Hindu), Madhya Pradesh

Murals at Ellora caves (Flying vidyadharas, Jain), Maharashtra

Frescoes at Sittanavasal cave (Nature scenes likely representing places of Tirthankara sermons, Jain), Tamil Nadu

Frescoes at Thirunadhikkara cave temple (Flowers and a woman, likely a scene of puja offering to Ganesha, another of Vishnu, Hindu), Travancore region, Kerala-Tamil Nadu

Paintings at the Brihadisvara temple (Dancer, Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Manuscript paintings (numerous states such as Gujarat, Kashmir, Kerala, Odisha, Assam; also Nepal, Tibet; Buddhist, Jain, Hindu

Vijayanagara temples (Hindu), Karnataka

Chidambaram temple (Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Chitrachavadi (Hindu, a choultry–mandapa near Madurai with Ramayana frescoes)

Pahari paintings (Hindu), Himachal Pradesh and nearby regions

Rajput paintings (Hindu), Rajasthan

Deccan paintings (Hindu, Jain)

Kerala paintings (Hindu)

Telangana paintings (Hindu)

Mughal paintings (Indo-Islamic)

 

CONTEMPORARY CULTURE

Kalamkari (Hindu)

Pattas (Jain, Hindu)

 

WIKIPEDIA

Chitra, also spelled as Citra, is an Indian genre of art that includes painting, sketch and any art form of delineation. The earliest mention of the term Chitra in the context of painting or picture is found in some of the ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism and Pali texts of Buddhism

 

NOMENCLATURE

Chitra (IAST: Citra, चित्र) is a Sanskrit word that appears in the Vedic texts such as hymns 1.71.1 and 6.65.2 of the Rigveda. There, and other texts such as Vajasaneyi Samhita, Taittiriya Samhita, Satapatha Brahmana and Tandya Brahmana, Chitra means "excellent, clear, bright, colored, anything brightly colored that strikes the eye, brilliantly ornamented, extraordinary that evokes wonder". In the Mahabharata and the Harivamsa, it means "picture, sktech, dilineation", and is presented as a genre of kala (arts). Many texts generally dated to the post-4th-century BCE period, use the term Chitra in the sense of painting, and Chitrakara as a painter. For example, the Sanskrit grammarian Panini in verse 3.2.21 of his Astadhyayi highlights the word chitrakara in this sense. Halls and public spaces to display paintings are called chitrasalas, and the earliest known mention of these are found in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

 

A few Indian regional texts such as Kasyapa silpa refer to painting by others words. For example, abhasa – which literally means "semblance, shining forth", is used in Kasyapa-shilpa to mean as a broader category of painting, of which chitra is one of three types. The verses in section 4.4 of the Kasyapa-silpa state that there are three types of images – those which are immovable (walls, floor, terracota, stucco), movable, and those which are both movable-immovable (stone, wood, gems).[5] In each of these three, states Kasyapa-shipa, are three classes of expression – ardhacitra, citra, and citra-abhasa. Ardhacitra is an art form where a high relief is combined with painting and parts of the body is not seen (it appears to be emerging out of the canvas). The Citra is the form of picture artwork where the whole is represented with or without integrating a relief. Citrabhasha is the form where an image is represented on a canvas or wall with colors (painting). However, states Commaraswamy, the word Abhasa has other meanings depending on the context. For example, in Hindu texts on philosophy, it implies the "field of objective experience" in the sense of the intellectual image internalized by a person during a reading of a subject (such as an epic, tale or fiction), or one during a meditative spiritual experience.

 

In some Buddhist and Hindu texts on methods to prepare a manuscript (palm leaf) or a composition on a cloth, the terms lekhya and alekhya are also used in the context of a chitra. More specifically, alekhya is the space left while writing a manuscript leaf or cloth, where the artist aims to add a picture or painting to illustrate the text.

 

HISTORY

The earliest explicit reference to painting in an Indian text is found in verse 4.2 of the Maitri Upanishad where it uses the phrase citrabhittir or "like a painted wall". The Indian art of painting is also mention in a number of Buddhist Pali suttas, but with the modified spelling of Citta. This term is found in the context of either a painting, or painter, or painted-hall (citta-gara) in Majjhima Nikaya 1.127, Samyutta Nikaya 2.101 and 3.152, Vinaya 4.289 and others. Among the Jain texts, it is mentioned in Book 2 of the Acaranga Sutra as it explains that Jaina monk should not indulge in the pleasures of watching a painting.

 

The Kamasutra, broadly accepted to have been complete by about the 4th-century CE, recommends that the young man should surprise the girl he courts with gifts of color boxes and painted scrolls. The Viddhasalabhanjika – another Hindu kama- and kavya–text uses chitra-simile in verse 1.16, as "pictures painted by the god of love, with the brush of the mind and the canvas of the heart".

 

The nature of a chitra (painting), how the viewer's mind projects a two dimensional artwork into a three dimensional representation, is used by Asanga in Mahayana Sutralamkara – a 3rd to 5th-century Sanskrit text of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, to explain "non-existent imagination" as follows:

 

Just as in a picture painted according to rules, there are neither projections nor depressions and yet we see it in three dimensions, so in the non-existent imagination there is no phenomenal differentiation, and yet we behold it.

— Mahayana Sutralamkara 13.7, Translated in French by Sylvain Levi

 

According to Yoko Taniguchi and Michiyo Mori, the art of painting the caves at the c. 6th-century Buddhas of Bamiyan site in Afghanistan, destroyed by the Taliban Muslims in the late 1990s, were likely introduced to this region from India along with the literature on early Buddhism.

 

TEXTS

There are many important dedicated Indian treatises on chitra. Some of these are chapters within a larger encyclopedia-like text. These include:

 

Chitrasutras, chapters 35–43 within the Hindu text Vishnudharmottara Purana (the standard, and oft referred to text in the Indian tradition)

Chitralaksana of Nagnajit (a classic on classical painting, 5th-century CE or earlier making it the oldest known text on Indian painting; but the Sanskrit version has been lost, only version available is in Tibet and it states that it is a translation of a Sanskrit text)

Samarangana Sutradhara (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Aparajitaprccha (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Manasollasa (an encyclopedia, contains chapters on paintings)

Abhilashitartha chinatamani

Sivatatva ratnakara

Chitra Kaladruma

Silpa ratna

Narada silpa

Sarasvati silpa

Prajapati silpa

Kasyapa silpa

 

These and other texts on chitra not only discuss the theory and practice of painting, some of them include discussions on how to become a painter, the diversity and the impact of a chitra on viewers, of aesthetics, how the art of painting relates to other arts (kala), methods of preparing the canvas or wall, methods and recipes to make color pigments. For example, the 10th-century Chitra Kaladruma presents recipe for making red color paint from the resin of lac insects. Other colors for the historic frescoes found in India, such as those in the Ajanta Caves, were obtained from nature. They mention earthy and mineral (inorganic) colorants such as yellow and red ochre, orpigment, green celadonite and ultramarine blue (lapis lazuli). The use of organic colorants prepared per a recipe in these texts have been confirmed through residue analysis and modern chromatographic techniques.

 

THEORY

The Indian concepts of painting are described in a range of texts called the shilpa shastras. These typically begin by attributing this art to divine sources such as Vishvakarma and ancient rishis (sages) such as Narayana and Nagnajit, weaving some mythology, highlighting chitra as a means to express ideas and beauty along with other universal aspects, then proceed to discuss the theory and practice of painting, sketching and other related arts. Manuscripts of many these texts are found in India, while some are known to be lost but are found outside India such as in Tibet and Nepal. Among these are the Citrasutras in the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana manuscripts discovered in India, and the Citralaksana manuscript discovered in Tibet (lost in India). This theory include early Indian ideas on how to prepare a canvas or substrate, measurement, proportion, stance, color, shade, projection, the painting's interaction with light, the viewer, how to captivate the mind, and other ideas.

 

According to the historic Indian tradition, a successful and impactful painting and painter requires a knowledge of the subject – either mythology or real life, as well as a keen sense of observation and knowledge of nature, human behavior, dance, music, song and other arts. For example, section 3.2 of Visnudharmottara Purana discusses these requirements and the contextual knowledge needed in chitra and the artist who produces it. The Chitrasutras in the Vishnudharmottara Purana state that the sculpture and painting arts are related, with the phrase "as in Natya, so in Citra". This relationship links them in rasa (aesthetics) and as forms of expression.

 

THE PAINTING

A chitra is a form of expression and communication. According to Aparajitaprccha – a 12th-century text on arts and architecture, just like the water reflects the moon, a chitra reflects the world. It is a rupa (form) of how the painter sees or what the painter wants the viewer to observe or feel or experience.

 

A good painting is one that is alive, breathing, draws in and affects the viewer. It captivates the minds of viewers, despite their diversity. Installed in a sala (hall or room), it enlivens the space.

 

The ornaments of a painting are its lines, shading, decoration and colors, states the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana. It states that there are eight gunas (merits, features) of a chitra that the artist must focus on: posture; proportion; the use of the plumb line; charm; detail (how much and where); verisimilitude; kshaya (loss, foreshortening) and; vrddhi (gain). Among the dosas (demerits, faults) of a painting and related arts, states Chitrasutra, are lines that are weak or thick, absence of variety, errors in scale (oversized eyes, lips, cheeks), inconsistency across the canvas, deviations from the rules of proportion, improper posture or sentiment, and non-merging of colors.

 

LIMBS OF THE PAINTING

Two historical sets called "chitra anga", or "limbs of painting" are found in Indian texts. According to the Samarangana Sutradhara – an 11th-century Sanskrit text on Hindu architecture and arts, a painting has eight limbs:

 

Vartika – manufacture of brushes

Bhumibandhana – preparation of base, plaster, canvas

Rekhakarma – sketching

Varnakarma – coloring

Vartanakarma – shading

lekhakarana – outlining

Dvikakarma – second and final lining

Lepyakarma – final coating

 

According to Yashodhara's Jayamangala, a Sanskrit commentary on Kamasutra, there are sadanga (six limbs)[note 5] in the art of alekhyam and chitra (drawing and painting):

 

Rupa-bhedah, or form distinction; this requires a knowledge of characteristic marks, diversity, manifested forms that distinguish states of something in the same genus/class

Pramanani, or measure; requires knowledge of measurement and proportion rules (talamana)

Bhava yojanam, or emotion and its joining with other parts of the painting; requires understanding and representing the mood of the subject

Lavanya yojanam, or rasa, charm; requires understanding and representing the inner qualities of the subject

Sadrsyam, or resemblance; requires knowledge of visual correspondence across the canvas

Varnika-bhanga or color-pigment-analysis; requires knowledge how colors distribute on the canvas and how they visually impact the viewer.

 

These six limbs are arranged stylistically in two ways. First as a set of compound (Rupa-bhedah and Varnika-bhanda), a set of joining (middle two yojnam), and a set of single words (Pramanani and Sadrsyam). Second, states Victor Mair, the six limbs in this Hindu text are paired in a set of differentiation skills (first two), then a pair of aesthetic skills, and finally a pair of technical skills. These limbs parallel the 12th-century Six principles of Chinese painting of Xie He. {refn|group=note|The Hua Chi of Teng Ch'un, a 12th-century Chinese text, mentions the Buddhist temple of Nalanda with frescoes about the Buddha painted inside. It states that the Indian Buddhas look different from those painted by Chinese, as the Indian paintings have Buddha with larger eyes, their ears are curiously stretched and the Buddhas have their right shoulder bare. It then states that the artists first make a drawing of the picture, then paint a vermilion or gold colored base. It also mentions the use of ox-glue and a gum produced from peach trees and willow juice, with the artists preferring the latter. According to Coomaraswamy, the ox-glue in the Indian context mentioned in the Chinese text is probably the same as the recipe found in the Sanskrit text Silparatna, one where the base medium is produced from boiling buffalo skin in milk, followed by drying and blending process.

 

The six limbs in Jayamangala likely reflect the earliest and more established Hindu tradition for chitra. This is supported by the Chitrasutras found in the Vishnudharmottara Purana. They explicitly mention pramanani and lavanya as key elements of a painting, as well as discuss the other four of the six limbs in other sutras. The Chitrasutra chapters are likely from about the 4th or 5th-century. Numerous other Indian texts touch upon the elements or aspects of a chitra. For example, the Aparajitaprccha states that the essential elements of a painting are: citrabhumi (background), the rekha (lines, sketch), the varna (color), the vartana (shading), the bhusana (decoration) and the rasa (aesthetic experience).

 

THE PAINTER

The painter (chitrakara, rupakara) must master the fundamentals of measurement and proportions, state the historic chitra texts of India. According to these historic texts, the expert painter masters the skills in measurement, characteristics of subjects, attributes, form, relative proportion, ornament and beauty, states Isabella Nardi – a scholar known for her studies on chitra text and traditions of India. According to the Chitrasutras, a skilled painter needs practice, and is one who is able to paint neck, hands, feet, ears of living beings without ornamentation, as well as paint water waves, flames, smoke, and garments as they get affected by the speed of wind. He paints all types of scenes, ranging from dharma, artha and kama. A painter observes, then remembers, repeating this process till his memory has all the details he needs to paint, states Silparatna. According to Sivatattva Ratnakara, he is well versed in sketching, astute with measurements, skilled in outlining (hastalekha), competent with colors, and ready to diligently mix and combine colors to create his chitra. The painter is a creative person, with an inner sense of rasa (aesthetics).

 

THE VIEWER

The painter should consider the diversity of viewers, states the Indian tradition of chitra. The experts and critics with much experience with paintings study the lines, shading and aesthetics, the uninitiated visitors and children enjoy the vibrancy of colors, while women tend to be attracted to the ornamentation of form and the emotions. A successful painter tends to captivate a variety of minds. A painter should remember that the visual and aesthetic impact of a painting triggers different responses in different audiences.

 

The Silparatna – a Sanskrit text on the arts, states that the painting should reflect its intended place and purpose. A theme suitable for a palace or gateway is different from that in a temple or the walls of a home. Scenes of wars, misery, death and suffering are not suitable paintings within homes, but these can be important in a chitrasala (museum with paintings). Auspicious paintings with beautiful colors such as those that cheer and enliven a room are better for homes, states Silparatna.

 

PRACITICE

According to the art historian Percy Brown, the painting tradition in India is ancient and the persuasive evidence are the oldest known murals at the Jogimara caves. The mention of chitra and related terms in the pre-Buddhist Vedic era texts, the chitra tradition is much older. It is very likely, states Brown, the pre-Buddhist structures had paintings in them. However, the primary building material in ancient India was wood, the colors were organic materials and natural pigments, which when combined with the tropical weather in India would naturally cause the painting to fade, damage and degrade over the centuries. It is not surprising, therefore, that sample paintings and historic evidence for chitra practice are unusual. The few notable surviving examples of chitra are found hidden in caves, where they would be naturally preserved a bit better, longer and would be somewhat protected from the destructive effects of wind, dust, water and biological processes.

Some notable, major surviving examples of historic paintings include:

 

Murals at Jogimara cave (eight panels of murals, with a Brahmi inscription, 2nd or 1st century BCE, Hindu), oldest known ceiling paintings in India in remote Ramgarh hills of northern Chhattisgarh, below on wall of this cave is a Brahmi inscription in Magadhi language about a girl named Devadasi and a boy named Devadina (either they were lovers and wrote a love-graffiti per one translation, or they were partners who together converted natural caves here into a theatre with painted walls per another translation)

 

Mural at Sitabhinji Group of Rock Shelters (c. 400 CE Ravanachhaya mural with an inscription, near a Shiva temple in remote Odisha, a non-religious painting), the oldest surviving example of a tempera painting in eastern states of India

 

Murals at Ajanta caves (Jataka tales, Buddhist), 5th-century CE, Maharashtra

Murals at Badami Cave Temples (Hindu), 6th-century CE, Karnataka (secular paintings along with one of the earliest known painting of a Hindu legend about Shiva and Parvati inside a Vaishnava cave)

Murals at Bagh caves (Hallisalasya dance, Buddhist or Hindu), Madhya Pradesh

Murals at Ellora caves (Flying vidyadharas, Jain), Maharashtra

Frescoes at Sittanavasal cave (Nature scenes likely representing places of Tirthankara sermons, Jain), Tamil Nadu

Frescoes at Thirunadhikkara cave temple (Flowers and a woman, likely a scene of puja offering to Ganesha, another of Vishnu, Hindu), Travancore region, Kerala-Tamil Nadu

Paintings at the Brihadisvara temple (Dancer, Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Manuscript paintings (numerous states such as Gujarat, Kashmir, Kerala, Odisha, Assam; also Nepal, Tibet; Buddhist, Jain, Hindu

Vijayanagara temples (Hindu), Karnataka

Chidambaram temple (Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Chitrachavadi (Hindu, a choultry–mandapa near Madurai with Ramayana frescoes)

Pahari paintings (Hindu), Himachal Pradesh and nearby regions

Rajput paintings (Hindu), Rajasthan

Deccan paintings (Hindu, Jain)

Kerala paintings (Hindu)

Telangana paintings (Hindu)

Mughal paintings (Indo-Islamic)

 

CONTEMPORARY CULTURE

Kalamkari (Hindu)

Pattas (Jain, Hindu)

 

WIKIPEDIA

CONTACT: K. @Alane Golden

Com./S.M. Specialist, NARA, NW: Nak-Nu-Wit

503.224. 1044, extension 264

agolden@naranorthwest.org

 

The Portland, Oregon Based Native American Rehabilitation Association of the Northwest, Inc., NARA NW, Will Join More than 1,000 National Children's Mental Health Awareness Day Celebrations’ Nationwide.

 

PORTLAND, OR — On Wednesday, May 9th, 2012, NARA, NW will host a Family Day celebration at Concordia University (2811 NE Holman Portland 97211) from 3 – 7pm, joining more than 1,000 communities and 115 federal programs and national organizations across the country participating in events, youth demonstrations, and social networking campaigns to raise awareness about the importance of children’s mental health. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's (SAMHSA) National Children's Mental Health Awareness Day seeks to raise awareness about the importance of positive mental health from birth. This year, the Awareness Day national event will focus on young children from birth to 8 years old by emphasizing the need to build resilience in young children dealing with trauma.

 

For the past forty – two years, NARA, NW has provided culturally appropriate education, physical and mental health services and substance abuse treatment to American Indians, Alaska Natives and other vulnerable people in the greater Portland metro community. NARA’s unique wraparound child and family mental health services program, Nak Nu Wit, serves families, their young children and youth with mental health challenges, offering culturally-based services and supports needed to thrive at home, in school, and in the community. Research has shown when children as young as 18 months are exposed to traumatic life events, they can develop serious psychological problems later in life and have a greater risk for experiencing problems with substance abuse, depression and physical health. Integrating social-emotional and resilience-building skills into every environment can have a positive impact on a child's healthy development.

 

In conjunction with the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board and Concordia University, NARA, NW will celebrate Awareness Day locally by hosting a Family Day with the culturally-rooted theme: "Warriors Against Trauma", highlighting the strengths & adventure-based youth and family activities, to Elder storytelling, traditional drumming, dancing and singing, the event offers something for everyone - blending rich history and traditions of the past with modern day tribal urban culture. Attendees will enjoy complimentary face-painting, food and drinks, arts, crafts, ceremony, storytelling with Ed Edmo and a special performance by Emcee One and an array of mental health materials and resources aimed at reducing stigma. The event will focus attention on the importance of providing comprehensive, community-based mental health supports and services to enhance resilience and nurture strength-based skills in young children from birth. In the NARA community, Elders, family relations, community members, spiritual helpers and friends are invited to help the family. Nak Nu Wit is a Sahaptin phrase describing the program’s philosophy and mission:

 

“Everything / All things are being taken care of for the people, the people are the project, our responsibility, our work.” It is in this spirit that NARA welcomes all to attend this free event.

 

NARA, NW holds sacred the culture and traditions’ passed down from our ancestors and believes that when we recognize our “Warrior Self”, we can exhibit strength, without sacrificing tenderness. It is precisely because our ancestors called upon their inner warriors to be a source of strength to draw upon in times of great need that we exist today. The “Warriors Against Trauma” campaign honors our ancestors and asks today’s youth to thoughtfully deploy their “Warrior Spirits” to manifest as clarity, focus, determination, courage, constancy and an unflappable zest for life.

 

“Trauma Warriors” understand a true warrior views roadblocks as evolutionary opportunities, and isn't afraid to pursue a purpose to its finish – in the face of hardship, adversity, or strife. There is more than enough room in the existence of the warrior for softness and benevolence, and the warrior’s willingness to stand up for their beliefs can aid greatly in the healing process. As our youth strive to incorporate these ideals with today’s fast-paced world, they broaden their realities to internalize mindfulness while overcoming life’s challenges with an unwavering intensity of spirit. Can we get a W.A.T., W.A.T.?

 

"’Awareness Day is an opportunity for us to join with communities across the country in celebrating the positive impact we have on the lives of young people when we’re able to integrate culturally relevant positive mental health into every environment,’ says Terry Ellis, Child and Family Services Clinical Manager. ‘When we focus on building resilience and coping skills in young children from birth, especially if they have experienced a traumatic event, we can help young children, youth, and their families thrive.’"

 

Data released on May 3, 2011, by SAMHSA indicates that an estimated 26% of American children will witness, or experience a traumatic event, before the age of 4 years. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), almost 60% of American adults say they endured abuse, or other difficult family circumstances, during childhood. Research has shown exposure to traumatic events early in life can have many negative effects throughout childhood and adolescence, into adulthood. The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study found a strong relationship between traumatic events experienced in childhood as reported in adulthood, and chronic physical illness such as heart disease, and mental health problems which includes depression.

 

The annual financial burden to society of childhood abuse and trauma is estimated to be $103 billion. NARA, NW is committed not only to treatment aimed at reducing this financial burden, but, strives to address historical trauma through culturally-based mental health services. Through NARA’s child and family mental health programs, our families and youth are treated by nationally recognized trauma experts who aim to decrease the prevalence of exposure to traumatic events among children and youth to eliminate intergenerational trauma, the problems trauma causes, and offer available treatments that can help children and youth recover through resilience. It is a great honor to act as liaisons, standing side-by-side with family and community members helping ensure the complete mental health and well being our youth so they may continue the traditions passed down from elders with strength, honor and dignity.

 

12 year old Mechoopta Maidu tribal member and Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day contributing artist reflects upon what a Warrior Against Trauma means to him, “I have very bad dreams that wake me up at night. With help from Amber, I learned to call my Warrior to make the bad things that happen to me when I sleep go away. He protects me by throwing a tomahawk at the bad things, making them disappear and helping me sleep better.” Michael, NARA Nak Nu Wit client.

 

For more information, join the conversation on Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/NARANCMHAD/ and Follow us on Twitter @NCMHAD

ROMA ARCHEOLOGICA & RESTAURO ARCHITETTURA 2020. «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. The NYT (18 Aug. 2020) & Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (13 Apr. 2020). S.v., "Raffaello architetto", in: The NYT (06 March 2020); Università di Padova (20/07/2020); Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020); Jhon Correa / Facebook (1 July 2020) & Prof. Cammy Brothers (2001). wp.me/pbMWvy-uQ

 

1). ROME - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. Scuderie del Quirinale (5 March - June 2020).

 

A monographic exhibition with over two hundred masterpieces among paintings, drawings and comparative works, dedicated to Raffaello on the 500th anniversary of his death, which took place in Rome on April 6, 1520 at the age of just 37 years old.

 

The exhibition, which finds inspiration particularly in the Raffaello's fundamental Roman period which consecrated him as an artist of incomparable and legendary greatness, tells his whole complex and articulated creative path with richness of detail through a vast corpus of works, for the first time exposed all together.

 

Many institutions involved have contributed to enrich the exhibition with masterpieces from their collections: among these, in Italy, the National Galleries of Ancient Art, the National Art Gallery of Bologna, the Museum and the Real Bosco di Capodimonte, the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, the Brescia Museums Foundation, and abroad, in addition to the Vatican Museums, the Louvre, the National Gallery of London, the Prado Museum, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Albertina in Vienna, the British Museum, the Royal Collection, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lille.

 

Fonte / source:

--- Scuderie del Quirinale (5 March - June 2020).

www.scuderiequirinale.it/mostra/copia-di-raffaello

 

2.1). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483», in: Intervento delle Scuderie del Quirinale per la maratona del MiBACT "Italia chiamò" / Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (Mar 13, 2020).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8l6q9ywLxY&t=112s

 

2.2). ROME - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. / English / Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (Apr. 13, 2020). www.youtube.com/watch?v=s58gYvvNrKQ&t=61s

 

3). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. Scuderie del Quirinale (05/03 - 02/06/2020).

 

Il 6 aprile 1520 muore a Roma, a trentasette anni, Raffaello Sanzio, il più grande pittore del Rinascimento. La città sembra fermarsi nella commozione e nel rimpianto, mentre la notizia della scomparsa si diffonde con incredibile rapidità in tutte le corti europee. S’interrompeva non solo un percorso artistico senza precedenti, ma anche l’ambizioso progetto di ricostruzione grafica della Roma antica, commissionato dal pontefice, che avrebbe riscattato dopo secoli di oblio e rovina la grandezza e la nobiltà della capitale dei Cesari, affermando inoltre una nuova idea di tutela. Sepolto secondo le sue ultime volontà nel Pantheon, simbolo della continuità fra diverse tradizioni di culto, forse l’esempio più emblematico dell’architettura classica, Raffaello diviene immediatamente oggetto di un processo di divinizzazione, mai veramente interrotto, che ci consegna oggi la perfezione e l’armonia della sua arte.

A distanza di cinquecento anni, questa mostra racconta la sua storia e insieme quella di tutta la cultura figurativa occidentale che l’ha considerato un modello imprescindibile. La mostra, articolata secondo un’idea originale, propone un percorso che ripercorre a ritroso l’avventura creativa di Raffaello, da Roma a Firenze, da Firenze all’Umbria, fino alla nativa Urbino. Un incalzante flash-back che consente di ripensare il percorso biografico partendo dalla sua massima espansione creativa negli anni di Leone X. Risalendo il corso della vita di Raffaello di capolavoro in capolavoro, il visitatore potrà rintracciare in filigrana la prefigurazione di quel linguaggio classico che solo a Roma, assimilata nel profondo la lezione dell’antico, si sviluppò con una pienezza che non ha precedenti nella storia dell’arte. Grazie ad un numero eccezionale di capolavori provenienti dalle maggiori raccolte italiane ed europee, la mostra organizzata dalle Scuderie del Quirinale insieme con le Gallerie degli Uffizi, costituisce un’occasione ineguagliabile per osservare da vicino le invenzioni dell’Urbinate. Il suo breve, luminoso percorso ha cambiato per sempre la storia delle arti e del gusto: Raffaello rivive nelle sale dell’esposizione che lo celebra come genio universale.

 

Fonte / source:

--- Scuderie del Quirinale (05/03 - 02/06/2020).

www.scuderiequirinale.it/mostra/raffaello-000

 

3). ROME «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. The NYT (18 Aug. 2020).

 

ROME - In the Virtual (and Actual) Footsteps of Raphael - In Italy and beyond, the plan was to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Renaissance artist’s death with great fanfare. Then came the pandemic, and the virtual world stepped in. The NYT (18 Aug. 2020).

 

______

Also see:

 

--- ROME - Rome Celebrates the Short, but Beautiful, Life of Raphael - Amid new coronavirus restrictions on museums in Italy, a blockbuster show traces the artistʼs life from finish to start. The NYT (06 March 2020).

www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/arts/raphael-rome-coronavirus....

______

 

This was supposed to be the year of Raphael. Five hundred years after his death at 37, the Renaissance master was due to receive the exalted rollout reserved for artistic superstars: blockbuster museum shows in Rome and London; conferences and lectures at universities and cultural centers around the world; flag-waving and wreath-laying in his Italian hometown, Urbino. There was even the tang of controversy when the advisory committee of Florence’s Uffizi Gallery resigned en masse to protest the inclusion of a precious papal portrait in the big exhibition at Rome’s Scuderie del Quirinale. Then the coronavirus hit and Raphael’s annus mirabilis turned into the world’s annus horribilis.

 

When news of the handsome young artist’s death broke in Rome on April 6, 1520, Pope Leo X wept and church bells tolled all over the city.

Half a millennium later, Rome was in lockdown along with the rest of Italy as deaths from the virus spiraled. The Scuderie show, a once-in-a-lifetime gathering of more than 200 works (120 by Raphael) from all over the world, was forced to shut its doors after just three days, despite having presold a record 70,000 tickets. Raphael’s tomb in the Pantheon was supposed to be adorned with a red rose every day of 2020 to commemorate his death — but the ancient temple was also shuttered because of the virus. Lectures and conferences were canceled, postponed or moved online.

 

Poor Raphael. Last year, the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death came off without a hitch. Raphael’s devotees hoped that this

year’s celebrations would restore the artist’s luster, which has dimmed over the past centuries. When the world fell ill this past winter,

Raphael was one of the casualties. But all is not lost. The Scuderie show reopened on June 2 and will remain up until the end of August. The Scuderie’s president, Mario de Simoni, had expected as many as 500,000 people to see the show pre-virus, but now says the number probably won’t exceed 160,000. For those unable to attend in person, the Scuderie has released an English-language version of its excellent video, recapping the highlights of the exhibition, room by room. You’ll want to hit the pause button in Room 2 to admire two masterpieces on loan from the Louvre: a selfportrait with a friend and the portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, one of the glories of Renaissance portraiture. The close-ups of his paintings of women in Room 6 testify to the artist’s passionate appreciation of feminine beauty. Other Scuderie videos (in Italian) delve into particular aspects of his genius — for instance, the jewelry worn by his female subjects, or the literary world he moved in.

Tour guides such as Clam Tours and Joy of Rome now offer virtual journeys in which small groups can zoom around Italy in the footsteps of the artist. On Sept. 13, for example, you can join the Renaissance specialist Antonio Forcellino and other Italian art experts on Clam Tour’s virtual exploration of Raphael’s incomparable frescoes of the four sibyls at Rome’s Santa Maria della Pace church ($25). Check out Joy of Rome’s free two-minute video about Raphael’s frescoes at the Villa Farnesina to see if you’d like to sign up for a two-and-a-half hour virtual tour (prices on request).

 

Even on a laptop screen, Raphael’s ever-evolving craftsmanship and quicksilver brilliance are apparent. “The year of Raphael has not

been ruined, but simply modified,” said Marzia Faietti, a curator of the Scuderie show. “Since many conferences and lectures have been

put off until next year, in a sense there will be two years of Raphael.”

 

For Italians, a silver lining of the pandemic has been the opportunity to relish their cultural treasures without the tourist hordes. “I cried,”

said Francesca Pagliaro, founder of the Joy of Rome tour company, of the experience of standing alone in the Vatican’s recently reopened

Sala di Costantino — one of four rooms in the museum frescoed by Raphael and his students, and which you can view here. “It’s the first

time in five years that I’ve seen the Stanze without scaffolding — and I had it to myself,” Ms. Pagliaro said. “It was magical.” Americans, barred from European travel for the foreseeable future, will have to make do with all this virtual magic. Not ideal — but Raphael’s magic is powerful, subtle and enduring enough to withstand the challenge.

 

The spirit of Urbino

I can attest to this because back in November 2019, I had the opportunity to follow in Raphael’s actual, not virtual, footsteps in Italy. I stood

shivering in the room where he was born in Urbino in 1483. I knelt at the austere tomb in a niche inside the Pantheon where he was

interred 37 years later. I feasted my eyes not only on paintings and frescoes, but on the humble church and glorious Roman chapel that

attest to his emerging genius for architecture. My pilgrimage would be impossible today — but thanks to the wonders of the internet and

the resourcefulness of Italy’s leading cultural institutions, I can remotely retrace my steps, refresh my memories and relive the

revelations.

 

The first revelation came, aptly, in Urbino’s Palazzo Ducale, the magnificent Renaissance palace constructed in the late 15th century by the

humanist and warlord Federico da Montefeltro that now houses the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche. Judge the magnificence for yourself

by clicking through Google Images’ impressive photo archive. Another click puts you face to face with the museum’s sole work by Raphael

— the haunting portrait known as “La Muta” (“The Mute Woman”). As in so many of his portraits, Raphael posed this stern beauty against a solid dark background, eschewing any visual cues that would evoke a sense of place.

 

How, I wondered, did Urbino influence the art of its most famous son?

 

I posed this question to Peter Aufreiter, then director of the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, when I sat down with him in his office in the

Palazzo Ducale. Mr. Aufreiter’s response was to click on an image of Raphael’s 1507 portrait of Federico’s son, Duke Guidobaldo da

Montefeltro (now in the Uffizi), and then summon me to the window. “Look at the hillside across the valley and that house at the base of

the hill — it’s the same background Raphael put in his painting of Guidobaldo.” You can see exactly what Mr. Aufreiter meant by using the

magnify feature on this online image. Urbino’s steep green landscape, limpid light and crystalline architecture — you can also get a good sense of it here — imprinted themselves on the artist’s young mind and surface repeatedly in his work.

 

Even though Raphael spent most of his career in Florence and Rome, Mr. Aufreiter insists that Urbino, whose cityscape has changed little

since the Renaissance, is where you can feel his spirit most intensely.

 

The spirit is palpable in the artisans’ quarter surrounding the house where Raphael was born, the son of the local court painter Giovanni

Santi. Near the summit of the ski-slope-pitched Via Raffaello, just a stone’s throw from the rather pompous bronze monument of the artist

erected in 1897, the Casa Natale di Raffaello has been preserved as a museum. There’s a rather rudimentary virtual tour on its website, but

you’ll get a better feel for the interior and exterior spaces in this YouTube video. In these bare simple rooms and the deep brick courtyard

they enclose, little imagination is required to dial the scene back to Raphael’s apprenticeship in the last years of the 15th century. Giovanni

Santi’s bottega (workshop) occupied the ground floor, and the future master grew up amid the bustle of painters grinding pigments,

dabbing madonnas and trading in art supplies.

 

Father and son conducted a more exalted commerce at Urbino’s Palazzo Ducale. Fabricated of brick, stone and flawless geometry, this

palace was one of the glories of the Italian Renaissance — not only for its divine architecture, but for the refined elegance of the nobles

who gathered here. This video captures some facets of the palace’s perfection — the way its silhouette pierces the profile of surrounding

hills, the ideal proportions of its noble courtyard, the interplay of volume and decoration in its interior.

 

Baldassare Castiglione set his 1528 masterpiece, “The Book of the Courtier,” in this storied palace — and it was here that the young

Raphael polished his manners, sharpened his wit, cultivated invaluable connections and acquired a lifelong passion for classical antiquity.

Raised at court, Raphael was pursued by the powerful (Popes Julius II and Leo X), esteemed by the brilliant (Castiglione and the Urbinoborn

architect Donato Bramante were close friends) and adored by the beautiful. “Raphael was a very amorous person,” wrote Giorgio Vasari, his first biographer. It was Vasari who originated the claim that Raphael died after an overindulgence in sex with his Roman mistress, Margherita Luti. Whatever really killed him on April 6, 1520, Raphael accomplished much and rose high in his brief life — but he never ceased to be “il maestro Urbinate,” the master from Urbino.

 

A couch-surfing brush-for-hire.

Orphaned when his father died in 1494 (his mother had died three years earlier), Raphael spent his teenage years as an apprentice before

undertaking commissions in Umbria and Tuscany. It’s likely that he was in Florence by 1504 — not as a permanent resident but rather a

couch-surfing brush-for-hire.

 

Though Raphael’s footsteps in Florence are faint, there is no question that he encountered the works of both Leonardo da Vinci and

Michelangelo here — including, very likely, the Mona Lisa, which you can view here, and the marble statue of David, which you can see

and read about on the Accademia’s detailed website. Critics and connoisseurs have been measuring this Renaissance trio against each other for 500 years now. Florence’s Uffizi Gallery is the ideal place to revisit this rivalry, both in person and virtually. After a recent renovation, paintings by the big three have been put on display in two beautifully lit adjoining rooms, and you can find them on the Uffizi website.

 

To my eyes, neither Michelangelo nor Leonardo ever matched the sheer painterly virtuosity of the fringed white collar that Raphael stitched around the neck of the cloth merchant Agnolo Doni, or the faint dent he incised between the young businessman’s anxious brows (use the magnify function to zoom in on this image). Agnolo’s 15-year-old bride, Maddalena Strozzi, hangs beside him, posed like the Mona Lisa with bejeweled hands clasped on her lap, but clad in a kaleidoscope of watered red silk, embroidered blue damask and shimmering gauze. Across the Arno are the glories of the Pitti Palace’s Galleria Palatina — the largest collection of Raphael’s works outside the Vatican. Unlike the Uffizi, the Pitti Palace retains the ambience and layout of an aristocratic residence: Paintings are stacked three deep in gilded high-ceilinged chambers; works are arranged idiosyncratically rather than chronologically; and the lighting can be maddeningly inadequate. Luckily for remote visitors, the lighting is much better on the palace’s website, as well as in the Italian and Spanish language videos about the museum’s treasures, posted here.

 

To the Eternal City

Raphael was summoned to Rome in 1508 by Pope Julius II, and he remained there until his death in 1520. Those 12 final years in the

Eternal City marked the apogee of his career. Painter, architect, entrepreneur, archaeologist, pioneer printmaker, Raphael became the

prototype of the artist as celebrity — the Andy Warhol of the Renaissance.

 

In pre-pandemic Rome, visitors had to endure the lines and tour groups that plagued the Vatican Museums in order to spend a few crowded moments with one of Raphael’s supreme accomplishments: the four papal chambers, known as the Stanze di Raffaello, that the artist and his workshop frescoed between 1508 and 1520. These days, in-person visitors to the reopened Vatican Museums enjoy the Stanze along with the nearby Sistine Chapel in ideal conditions. But remote visits can also be rewarding, thanks to the beautifully produced videos and virtual tours now available on the Vatican’s website. With the click of a mouse, you can hop back and forth between the virtual Sistine Chapel ceiling and the Raphael Stanze and decide for yourself which is the greater masterpiece.

 

“Everything he had in art, he had from me,” the curmudgeonly Michelangelo once grumbled of his younger rival. When you view their

roughly contemporaneous fresco cycles one after the other (or side by side on your computer), it’s clear that Raphael did much more than

borrow. “The School of Athens,” the most celebrated work in the Stanze, has the propulsive tension of a film paused at its climactic scene.

Cast members — a mix of classical philosophers and Renaissance savants — converse, argue, scribble, read and declaim on a sprawling,

but unified, “set” framed by classical architecture. By contrast, Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling, for all its bravura, reads like a series of

static cels.

 

After the Vatican’s Raphael Stanze, a logical next stop, whether actually or virtually, is the Villa Farnesina, with its two beguiling frescoed

loggias — “The Triumph of Galatea” in one of the loggias and “Cupid and Psyche” in the other. Despite the name, this riverside Trastevere landmark is neither a villa nor originally a Farnese property, but rather a suburban pleasure pavilion that Agostino Chigi built for himself in the early 16th century. Chigi brought in the finest artists of the day to fresco the loggias; the result is a delightful crazy quilt of mythological scenes and astrological symbols. Raphael’s “Galatea,” with her wind-whipped tresses, elegantly torqued bare torso and dolphin-powered, scallop-shell raft, has become an icon of High Renaissance grace and wit, and you can see it and other highlights in the villa’s video archive. Even if you don’t speak Italian, the short films are worth delving into for the imagery alone.

 

From painting to architecture

In the last phase of his career, Raphael increasingly turned from painting to architecture. Sadly, his major architectural achievements — the grand unfinished Villa Madama perched on a wooded hill two miles north of the Vatican, and the classically inspired Raphael loggias inside the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace — were inaccessible to the public even before the pandemic, and remain so. To get a sense of Raphael’s architectural genius, make (or click) your way to the church of Santa Maria del Popolo in the piazza of the same name at the northwest edge of the historic center. Like so many transplants, Raphael fell under the spell of the Eternal City’s classical substructure: Rome itself, its layers, its ruins and relics, its ceaseless commerce with the past, became a source of inspiration. The chapel he designed for Chigi inside the Popolo church evinces just how deeply and fruitfully Raphael internalized this inspiration. At first glance, it’s just another church chapel — tight, high, adorned with art and inlaid with precious stone. But on this site you can glimpse the almost miraculous geometry of this space — the interplay of disc and dome, the rhythm set up between the vertical pleats of the Corinthian pilasters and the elongated triangles of the twin red marble pyramids that mark the Chigis' graves. Fittingly, the artist who devoted the final years of his career to measuring, cataloging, preserving and mapping Roman antiquities, was laid to rest in the greatest classical structure to survive the ages: the Pantheon. If a trip to the physical Pantheon is not in the cards, you can drop in with Tom Hanks as your guide in this clip from the film “Angels and Demons.” As for his tomb — an easy-to-miss niche with a statue of the Virgin, modest and vague, presiding over the glassed-in coffin — you can view it here.

 

Marzia Faietti, curator of Rome’s Scuderie show, has been struck by how the virus has enhanced Raphael’s reputation and heightened

awareness of the twin beauties of his art and character. “Young people in particular have reacted with an outpouring of enthusiasm and

benevolence which I really didn’t expect,” she said. “The pandemic has brought suffering to so many, but the year of Raphael will be

remembered more vividly, not despite the virus, but because of it.”

 

Fonte / source:

--- The NYT (18 Aug. 2020).

www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/travel/in-the-virtual-and-actu...

 

Foto / fonte / source:

--- ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483», et al., Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (05/03 - 02/06/2020) (08/2020).

www.youtube.com/user/ScuderieQuirinale/videos

 

4.). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483»., in: "Raffaello architetto e la Lettera a Papa Leone X." Università di Padova (20/07/2020).

 

Artista dal talento straordinario, affermato, corteggiato, desiderato. Questo, ma non solo questo, fu Raffaello Sanzio (1483-1520): l'esperienza come architetto, lo studio e l'impegno per la tutela degli edifici antichi di Roma sono di importanza centrale nel suo percorso, a partire dalla realizzazione di opere come la Cappella Chigi e Villa Madama, fino alla stesura, insieme a Baldassarre Castiglione, della Lettera a Papa Leone X. La grande mostra Raffaello 1520-1483, allestita alle Scuderie del Quirinale di Roma, prorogata fino al 30 agosto, dedica ampio spazio alla sua appassionata attività nel campo dell'architettura.

 

"Sin dai primi anni di formazione, l'interesse di Raffaello per l'architettura, in particolare per quella del mondo antico, è fortemente presente - racconta il professor Zaggia al Bo Live - Fino a sfociare in un'opera fondamentale come Lo sposalizio della vergine, in cui compare un tempio a pianta centrale sullo sfondo che interpreta in modo molto chiaro le sperimentazioni del suo tempo in ambito architettonico. A questa sperimentazione dell'architettura sul piano della rappresentazione, segue poi, con il trasferimento di Raffaello a Roma tra il 1508 e il 1509 e l'incontro con Bramante, un interesse concreto rivolto alla costruzione e alla progettazione vera e propria. Da questo punto di vista, il rapporto che si instaura tra Raffaello e Bramante per lo studio dell'architettura antica, conservata all'interno della città, diventa fondamentale punto di partenza per un approfondimento che aprirà strade nuove all'architettura successiva. Con la morte di figure di riferimento, come Bramante appunto, Raffaello diventa la personalità più importante che opera nel campo dell'architettura all'interno dei grandi cantieri pontifici. Si apre così una stagione breve in cui le opere realizzate da Raffaello saranno numerose e importanti: alcune realmente costruite, altre solo progettate".

 

In questo contesto si inserisce la Lettera a Papa Leone X, scritta nel 1519 da Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione, il raffinato autore del Cortegiano (ai due, uniti da amicizia e stima reciproca, è dedicata una mostra al Palazzo Ducale di Urbino, dal titolo Baldassarre Castiglione e Raffaello.Volti e momenti della civiltà di corte), sul tema della tutela e dello studio degli edifici antichi. La premessa al documento è rintracciabile nei fatti avvenuti qualche anno prima: nell'estate del 1515, infatti, Leone X nomina Raffaello præfectus marmorum et lapidum omnium (dal 1514 l'Urbinate già dirigeva la fabbrica di San Pietro). La lettera dedicatoria, la cui prima edizione venne inserita all'interno delle opere di Baldassare Castiglione pubblicate a Padova nel 1733, si apre così: "Sono molti, padre santissimo, i quali misurando col loro piccolo giudizio le cose grandissime che delli romani circa l’arme, e della città di Roma circa al mirabile artificio, ai ricchi ornamenti e alla grandezza degli edifici si scrivono, quelle più presto stimano favolose che vere. Ma altrimenti a me suole avvenire; perché considerando dalle ruine, che ancor si veggono di Roma, la divinità di quegli animi antichi, non istimo fuor di ragione il credere che molte cose a noi paiono impossibili, che ad essi erano facilissime".

 

Nella prima parte Raffaello esalta la grandezza del passato, dichiara le proprie competenze in ambito architettonico e invita il pontefice a intervenire per garantire la tutela dei monumenti antichi, da salvare dal degrado. Nella seconda invece si concentra su questione più tecniche, introducendo anche la descrizione di uno strumento per la misurazione degli edifici antichi di sua invenzione: "Farassi adunque un instromento tondo e piano, come un astrolabio, il diametro del quale sarà due palmi o più o meno, come piace a chi vuole adoperarlo, e la circonferenza di questo istromento si partirà in otto parti giusti, e a ciascuna di quelle parti si porrà il nome d’uno degli otto venti, dividendola in trentadue altre parti picciole, che si chiameranno gradi [...] Con questo adunque misureremo ogni sorte di edificio, di che forma sia, o tondo o quadro o con istrani angoli e svoglimenti quanto dir si possa".

 

"L'importanza della lettera risiede nei principi enunciati all'inizio del testo, in cui Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione sostengono la necessità e l'urgenza di tutelare i monumenti antichi, per trasmetterle alle generazioni future - conclude Zaggia -. Non a caso la lettera, pubblicata alla fine del Settecento, una volta riconosciuto l'autore in Raffaello, diventa il punto di partenza per la legislazione adottata successivamente dagli Stati europei per la protezione del patrimonio artistico e culturale. Erede ultimo di questa tradizione è l'articolo 9 della nostra Costituzione".

 

Fonte/ source:

--- Università di Padova (20/07/2020).

ilbolive.unipd.it/it/news/raffaello-architetto-lettera-pa...

 

4.1). ROMA / Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020): «Raffaello 1520-1483»., "Raffaello architetto e la Lettera a Papa Leone X." S.v., Lettera a papa Leone X di Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione; in: Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020).

 

Nella galleria fotografica potrete scorrere la lettera di Raffaello e Baladassare Castiglione a papa Leone X. Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione, Lettera a papa Leone X, s.d. [1519]. Manoscritto cartaceo costituito da 6 carte di formato 220 x 290 mm circa, ripiegate a formare fascicoletto non rilegato di 24 facciate, di cui 21 scritte, 3 bianche. ASMn, Archivio Castiglioni (acquisto 2016), busta 2, n. 12.

 

Fonte / source:

--- Lettera a papa Leone X di Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione, in: Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020).

www.archiviodistatomantova.beniculturali.it/index.php?it/...

 

4.2). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. Scuderie del Quirinale (05/03 - 02/06/2020), in: Jhon Correa / Facebook (1 July 2020). www.facebook.com/jhon.correa.7549

 

4.3). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Lettera a papa Leone X di Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione. S.v.,

Prof. Cammy Brothers, “Architecture, History, Archaeology: Drawing Ancient Rome in the Letter to Leo X & in Sixteenth-Century Practice,” in Coming About…A Festschrift for John Shearman, ed. Lars R. Jones and Louisa C. Matthew. Cambridge: Harvard University Art Museums (2001): 135–40 [in PDF].

 

Fonte / source:

--- Prof. Cammy Brothers / academia.edu. (2020).

neu.academia.edu/CammyBrothers

 

ROMA ARCHEOLOGICA & RESTAURO ARCHITETTURA 2020. «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. The NYT (18 Aug. 2020) & Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (13 Apr. 2020). S.v., "Raffaello architetto", in: The NYT (06 March 2020); Università di Padova (20/07/2020); Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020); Jhon Correa / Facebook (1 July 2020) & Prof. Cammy Brothers (2001). wp.me/pbMWvy-uQ

 

1). ROME - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. Scuderie del Quirinale (5 March - June 2020).

 

A monographic exhibition with over two hundred masterpieces among paintings, drawings and comparative works, dedicated to Raffaello on the 500th anniversary of his death, which took place in Rome on April 6, 1520 at the age of just 37 years old.

 

The exhibition, which finds inspiration particularly in the Raffaello's fundamental Roman period which consecrated him as an artist of incomparable and legendary greatness, tells his whole complex and articulated creative path with richness of detail through a vast corpus of works, for the first time exposed all together.

 

Many institutions involved have contributed to enrich the exhibition with masterpieces from their collections: among these, in Italy, the National Galleries of Ancient Art, the National Art Gallery of Bologna, the Museum and the Real Bosco di Capodimonte, the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, the Brescia Museums Foundation, and abroad, in addition to the Vatican Museums, the Louvre, the National Gallery of London, the Prado Museum, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Albertina in Vienna, the British Museum, the Royal Collection, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lille.

 

Fonte / source:

--- Scuderie del Quirinale (5 March - June 2020).

www.scuderiequirinale.it/mostra/copia-di-raffaello

 

2.1). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483», in: Intervento delle Scuderie del Quirinale per la maratona del MiBACT "Italia chiamò" / Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (Mar 13, 2020).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8l6q9ywLxY&t=112s

 

2.2). ROME - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. / English / Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (Apr. 13, 2020). www.youtube.com/watch?v=s58gYvvNrKQ&t=61s

 

3). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. Scuderie del Quirinale (05/03 - 02/06/2020).

 

Il 6 aprile 1520 muore a Roma, a trentasette anni, Raffaello Sanzio, il più grande pittore del Rinascimento. La città sembra fermarsi nella commozione e nel rimpianto, mentre la notizia della scomparsa si diffonde con incredibile rapidità in tutte le corti europee. S’interrompeva non solo un percorso artistico senza precedenti, ma anche l’ambizioso progetto di ricostruzione grafica della Roma antica, commissionato dal pontefice, che avrebbe riscattato dopo secoli di oblio e rovina la grandezza e la nobiltà della capitale dei Cesari, affermando inoltre una nuova idea di tutela. Sepolto secondo le sue ultime volontà nel Pantheon, simbolo della continuità fra diverse tradizioni di culto, forse l’esempio più emblematico dell’architettura classica, Raffaello diviene immediatamente oggetto di un processo di divinizzazione, mai veramente interrotto, che ci consegna oggi la perfezione e l’armonia della sua arte.

A distanza di cinquecento anni, questa mostra racconta la sua storia e insieme quella di tutta la cultura figurativa occidentale che l’ha considerato un modello imprescindibile. La mostra, articolata secondo un’idea originale, propone un percorso che ripercorre a ritroso l’avventura creativa di Raffaello, da Roma a Firenze, da Firenze all’Umbria, fino alla nativa Urbino. Un incalzante flash-back che consente di ripensare il percorso biografico partendo dalla sua massima espansione creativa negli anni di Leone X. Risalendo il corso della vita di Raffaello di capolavoro in capolavoro, il visitatore potrà rintracciare in filigrana la prefigurazione di quel linguaggio classico che solo a Roma, assimilata nel profondo la lezione dell’antico, si sviluppò con una pienezza che non ha precedenti nella storia dell’arte. Grazie ad un numero eccezionale di capolavori provenienti dalle maggiori raccolte italiane ed europee, la mostra organizzata dalle Scuderie del Quirinale insieme con le Gallerie degli Uffizi, costituisce un’occasione ineguagliabile per osservare da vicino le invenzioni dell’Urbinate. Il suo breve, luminoso percorso ha cambiato per sempre la storia delle arti e del gusto: Raffaello rivive nelle sale dell’esposizione che lo celebra come genio universale.

 

Fonte / source:

--- Scuderie del Quirinale (05/03 - 02/06/2020).

www.scuderiequirinale.it/mostra/raffaello-000

 

3). ROME «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. The NYT (18 Aug. 2020).

 

ROME - In the Virtual (and Actual) Footsteps of Raphael - In Italy and beyond, the plan was to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Renaissance artist’s death with great fanfare. Then came the pandemic, and the virtual world stepped in. The NYT (18 Aug. 2020).

 

______

Also see:

 

--- ROME - Rome Celebrates the Short, but Beautiful, Life of Raphael - Amid new coronavirus restrictions on museums in Italy, a blockbuster show traces the artistʼs life from finish to start. The NYT (06 March 2020).

www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/arts/raphael-rome-coronavirus....

______

 

This was supposed to be the year of Raphael. Five hundred years after his death at 37, the Renaissance master was due to receive the exalted rollout reserved for artistic superstars: blockbuster museum shows in Rome and London; conferences and lectures at universities and cultural centers around the world; flag-waving and wreath-laying in his Italian hometown, Urbino. There was even the tang of controversy when the advisory committee of Florence’s Uffizi Gallery resigned en masse to protest the inclusion of a precious papal portrait in the big exhibition at Rome’s Scuderie del Quirinale. Then the coronavirus hit and Raphael’s annus mirabilis turned into the world’s annus horribilis.

 

When news of the handsome young artist’s death broke in Rome on April 6, 1520, Pope Leo X wept and church bells tolled all over the city.

Half a millennium later, Rome was in lockdown along with the rest of Italy as deaths from the virus spiraled. The Scuderie show, a once-in-a-lifetime gathering of more than 200 works (120 by Raphael) from all over the world, was forced to shut its doors after just three days, despite having presold a record 70,000 tickets. Raphael’s tomb in the Pantheon was supposed to be adorned with a red rose every day of 2020 to commemorate his death — but the ancient temple was also shuttered because of the virus. Lectures and conferences were canceled, postponed or moved online.

 

Poor Raphael. Last year, the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death came off without a hitch. Raphael’s devotees hoped that this

year’s celebrations would restore the artist’s luster, which has dimmed over the past centuries. When the world fell ill this past winter,

Raphael was one of the casualties. But all is not lost. The Scuderie show reopened on June 2 and will remain up until the end of August. The Scuderie’s president, Mario de Simoni, had expected as many as 500,000 people to see the show pre-virus, but now says the number probably won’t exceed 160,000. For those unable to attend in person, the Scuderie has released an English-language version of its excellent video, recapping the highlights of the exhibition, room by room. You’ll want to hit the pause button in Room 2 to admire two masterpieces on loan from the Louvre: a selfportrait with a friend and the portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, one of the glories of Renaissance portraiture. The close-ups of his paintings of women in Room 6 testify to the artist’s passionate appreciation of feminine beauty. Other Scuderie videos (in Italian) delve into particular aspects of his genius — for instance, the jewelry worn by his female subjects, or the literary world he moved in.

Tour guides such as Clam Tours and Joy of Rome now offer virtual journeys in which small groups can zoom around Italy in the footsteps of the artist. On Sept. 13, for example, you can join the Renaissance specialist Antonio Forcellino and other Italian art experts on Clam Tour’s virtual exploration of Raphael’s incomparable frescoes of the four sibyls at Rome’s Santa Maria della Pace church ($25). Check out Joy of Rome’s free two-minute video about Raphael’s frescoes at the Villa Farnesina to see if you’d like to sign up for a two-and-a-half hour virtual tour (prices on request).

 

Even on a laptop screen, Raphael’s ever-evolving craftsmanship and quicksilver brilliance are apparent. “The year of Raphael has not

been ruined, but simply modified,” said Marzia Faietti, a curator of the Scuderie show. “Since many conferences and lectures have been

put off until next year, in a sense there will be two years of Raphael.”

 

For Italians, a silver lining of the pandemic has been the opportunity to relish their cultural treasures without the tourist hordes. “I cried,”

said Francesca Pagliaro, founder of the Joy of Rome tour company, of the experience of standing alone in the Vatican’s recently reopened

Sala di Costantino — one of four rooms in the museum frescoed by Raphael and his students, and which you can view here. “It’s the first

time in five years that I’ve seen the Stanze without scaffolding — and I had it to myself,” Ms. Pagliaro said. “It was magical.” Americans, barred from European travel for the foreseeable future, will have to make do with all this virtual magic. Not ideal — but Raphael’s magic is powerful, subtle and enduring enough to withstand the challenge.

 

The spirit of Urbino

I can attest to this because back in November 2019, I had the opportunity to follow in Raphael’s actual, not virtual, footsteps in Italy. I stood

shivering in the room where he was born in Urbino in 1483. I knelt at the austere tomb in a niche inside the Pantheon where he was

interred 37 years later. I feasted my eyes not only on paintings and frescoes, but on the humble church and glorious Roman chapel that

attest to his emerging genius for architecture. My pilgrimage would be impossible today — but thanks to the wonders of the internet and

the resourcefulness of Italy’s leading cultural institutions, I can remotely retrace my steps, refresh my memories and relive the

revelations.

 

The first revelation came, aptly, in Urbino’s Palazzo Ducale, the magnificent Renaissance palace constructed in the late 15th century by the

humanist and warlord Federico da Montefeltro that now houses the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche. Judge the magnificence for yourself

by clicking through Google Images’ impressive photo archive. Another click puts you face to face with the museum’s sole work by Raphael

— the haunting portrait known as “La Muta” (“The Mute Woman”). As in so many of his portraits, Raphael posed this stern beauty against a solid dark background, eschewing any visual cues that would evoke a sense of place.

 

How, I wondered, did Urbino influence the art of its most famous son?

 

I posed this question to Peter Aufreiter, then director of the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, when I sat down with him in his office in the

Palazzo Ducale. Mr. Aufreiter’s response was to click on an image of Raphael’s 1507 portrait of Federico’s son, Duke Guidobaldo da

Montefeltro (now in the Uffizi), and then summon me to the window. “Look at the hillside across the valley and that house at the base of

the hill — it’s the same background Raphael put in his painting of Guidobaldo.” You can see exactly what Mr. Aufreiter meant by using the

magnify feature on this online image. Urbino’s steep green landscape, limpid light and crystalline architecture — you can also get a good sense of it here — imprinted themselves on the artist’s young mind and surface repeatedly in his work.

 

Even though Raphael spent most of his career in Florence and Rome, Mr. Aufreiter insists that Urbino, whose cityscape has changed little

since the Renaissance, is where you can feel his spirit most intensely.

 

The spirit is palpable in the artisans’ quarter surrounding the house where Raphael was born, the son of the local court painter Giovanni

Santi. Near the summit of the ski-slope-pitched Via Raffaello, just a stone’s throw from the rather pompous bronze monument of the artist

erected in 1897, the Casa Natale di Raffaello has been preserved as a museum. There’s a rather rudimentary virtual tour on its website, but

you’ll get a better feel for the interior and exterior spaces in this YouTube video. In these bare simple rooms and the deep brick courtyard

they enclose, little imagination is required to dial the scene back to Raphael’s apprenticeship in the last years of the 15th century. Giovanni

Santi’s bottega (workshop) occupied the ground floor, and the future master grew up amid the bustle of painters grinding pigments,

dabbing madonnas and trading in art supplies.

 

Father and son conducted a more exalted commerce at Urbino’s Palazzo Ducale. Fabricated of brick, stone and flawless geometry, this

palace was one of the glories of the Italian Renaissance — not only for its divine architecture, but for the refined elegance of the nobles

who gathered here. This video captures some facets of the palace’s perfection — the way its silhouette pierces the profile of surrounding

hills, the ideal proportions of its noble courtyard, the interplay of volume and decoration in its interior.

 

Baldassare Castiglione set his 1528 masterpiece, “The Book of the Courtier,” in this storied palace — and it was here that the young

Raphael polished his manners, sharpened his wit, cultivated invaluable connections and acquired a lifelong passion for classical antiquity.

Raised at court, Raphael was pursued by the powerful (Popes Julius II and Leo X), esteemed by the brilliant (Castiglione and the Urbinoborn

architect Donato Bramante were close friends) and adored by the beautiful. “Raphael was a very amorous person,” wrote Giorgio Vasari, his first biographer. It was Vasari who originated the claim that Raphael died after an overindulgence in sex with his Roman mistress, Margherita Luti. Whatever really killed him on April 6, 1520, Raphael accomplished much and rose high in his brief life — but he never ceased to be “il maestro Urbinate,” the master from Urbino.

 

A couch-surfing brush-for-hire.

Orphaned when his father died in 1494 (his mother had died three years earlier), Raphael spent his teenage years as an apprentice before

undertaking commissions in Umbria and Tuscany. It’s likely that he was in Florence by 1504 — not as a permanent resident but rather a

couch-surfing brush-for-hire.

 

Though Raphael’s footsteps in Florence are faint, there is no question that he encountered the works of both Leonardo da Vinci and

Michelangelo here — including, very likely, the Mona Lisa, which you can view here, and the marble statue of David, which you can see

and read about on the Accademia’s detailed website. Critics and connoisseurs have been measuring this Renaissance trio against each other for 500 years now. Florence’s Uffizi Gallery is the ideal place to revisit this rivalry, both in person and virtually. After a recent renovation, paintings by the big three have been put on display in two beautifully lit adjoining rooms, and you can find them on the Uffizi website.

 

To my eyes, neither Michelangelo nor Leonardo ever matched the sheer painterly virtuosity of the fringed white collar that Raphael stitched around the neck of the cloth merchant Agnolo Doni, or the faint dent he incised between the young businessman’s anxious brows (use the magnify function to zoom in on this image). Agnolo’s 15-year-old bride, Maddalena Strozzi, hangs beside him, posed like the Mona Lisa with bejeweled hands clasped on her lap, but clad in a kaleidoscope of watered red silk, embroidered blue damask and shimmering gauze. Across the Arno are the glories of the Pitti Palace’s Galleria Palatina — the largest collection of Raphael’s works outside the Vatican. Unlike the Uffizi, the Pitti Palace retains the ambience and layout of an aristocratic residence: Paintings are stacked three deep in gilded high-ceilinged chambers; works are arranged idiosyncratically rather than chronologically; and the lighting can be maddeningly inadequate. Luckily for remote visitors, the lighting is much better on the palace’s website, as well as in the Italian and Spanish language videos about the museum’s treasures, posted here.

 

To the Eternal City

Raphael was summoned to Rome in 1508 by Pope Julius II, and he remained there until his death in 1520. Those 12 final years in the

Eternal City marked the apogee of his career. Painter, architect, entrepreneur, archaeologist, pioneer printmaker, Raphael became the

prototype of the artist as celebrity — the Andy Warhol of the Renaissance.

 

In pre-pandemic Rome, visitors had to endure the lines and tour groups that plagued the Vatican Museums in order to spend a few crowded moments with one of Raphael’s supreme accomplishments: the four papal chambers, known as the Stanze di Raffaello, that the artist and his workshop frescoed between 1508 and 1520. These days, in-person visitors to the reopened Vatican Museums enjoy the Stanze along with the nearby Sistine Chapel in ideal conditions. But remote visits can also be rewarding, thanks to the beautifully produced videos and virtual tours now available on the Vatican’s website. With the click of a mouse, you can hop back and forth between the virtual Sistine Chapel ceiling and the Raphael Stanze and decide for yourself which is the greater masterpiece.

 

“Everything he had in art, he had from me,” the curmudgeonly Michelangelo once grumbled of his younger rival. When you view their

roughly contemporaneous fresco cycles one after the other (or side by side on your computer), it’s clear that Raphael did much more than

borrow. “The School of Athens,” the most celebrated work in the Stanze, has the propulsive tension of a film paused at its climactic scene.

Cast members — a mix of classical philosophers and Renaissance savants — converse, argue, scribble, read and declaim on a sprawling,

but unified, “set” framed by classical architecture. By contrast, Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling, for all its bravura, reads like a series of

static cels.

 

After the Vatican’s Raphael Stanze, a logical next stop, whether actually or virtually, is the Villa Farnesina, with its two beguiling frescoed

loggias — “The Triumph of Galatea” in one of the loggias and “Cupid and Psyche” in the other. Despite the name, this riverside Trastevere landmark is neither a villa nor originally a Farnese property, but rather a suburban pleasure pavilion that Agostino Chigi built for himself in the early 16th century. Chigi brought in the finest artists of the day to fresco the loggias; the result is a delightful crazy quilt of mythological scenes and astrological symbols. Raphael’s “Galatea,” with her wind-whipped tresses, elegantly torqued bare torso and dolphin-powered, scallop-shell raft, has become an icon of High Renaissance grace and wit, and you can see it and other highlights in the villa’s video archive. Even if you don’t speak Italian, the short films are worth delving into for the imagery alone.

 

From painting to architecture

In the last phase of his career, Raphael increasingly turned from painting to architecture. Sadly, his major architectural achievements — the grand unfinished Villa Madama perched on a wooded hill two miles north of the Vatican, and the classically inspired Raphael loggias inside the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace — were inaccessible to the public even before the pandemic, and remain so. To get a sense of Raphael’s architectural genius, make (or click) your way to the church of Santa Maria del Popolo in the piazza of the same name at the northwest edge of the historic center. Like so many transplants, Raphael fell under the spell of the Eternal City’s classical substructure: Rome itself, its layers, its ruins and relics, its ceaseless commerce with the past, became a source of inspiration. The chapel he designed for Chigi inside the Popolo church evinces just how deeply and fruitfully Raphael internalized this inspiration. At first glance, it’s just another church chapel — tight, high, adorned with art and inlaid with precious stone. But on this site you can glimpse the almost miraculous geometry of this space — the interplay of disc and dome, the rhythm set up between the vertical pleats of the Corinthian pilasters and the elongated triangles of the twin red marble pyramids that mark the Chigis' graves. Fittingly, the artist who devoted the final years of his career to measuring, cataloging, preserving and mapping Roman antiquities, was laid to rest in the greatest classical structure to survive the ages: the Pantheon. If a trip to the physical Pantheon is not in the cards, you can drop in with Tom Hanks as your guide in this clip from the film “Angels and Demons.” As for his tomb — an easy-to-miss niche with a statue of the Virgin, modest and vague, presiding over the glassed-in coffin — you can view it here.

 

Marzia Faietti, curator of Rome’s Scuderie show, has been struck by how the virus has enhanced Raphael’s reputation and heightened

awareness of the twin beauties of his art and character. “Young people in particular have reacted with an outpouring of enthusiasm and

benevolence which I really didn’t expect,” she said. “The pandemic has brought suffering to so many, but the year of Raphael will be

remembered more vividly, not despite the virus, but because of it.”

 

Fonte / source:

--- The NYT (18 Aug. 2020).

www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/travel/in-the-virtual-and-actu...

 

Foto / fonte / source:

--- ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483», et al., Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (05/03 - 02/06/2020) (08/2020).

www.youtube.com/user/ScuderieQuirinale/videos

 

4.). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483»., in: "Raffaello architetto e la Lettera a Papa Leone X." Università di Padova (20/07/2020).

 

Artista dal talento straordinario, affermato, corteggiato, desiderato. Questo, ma non solo questo, fu Raffaello Sanzio (1483-1520): l'esperienza come architetto, lo studio e l'impegno per la tutela degli edifici antichi di Roma sono di importanza centrale nel suo percorso, a partire dalla realizzazione di opere come la Cappella Chigi e Villa Madama, fino alla stesura, insieme a Baldassarre Castiglione, della Lettera a Papa Leone X. La grande mostra Raffaello 1520-1483, allestita alle Scuderie del Quirinale di Roma, prorogata fino al 30 agosto, dedica ampio spazio alla sua appassionata attività nel campo dell'architettura.

 

"Sin dai primi anni di formazione, l'interesse di Raffaello per l'architettura, in particolare per quella del mondo antico, è fortemente presente - racconta il professor Zaggia al Bo Live - Fino a sfociare in un'opera fondamentale come Lo sposalizio della vergine, in cui compare un tempio a pianta centrale sullo sfondo che interpreta in modo molto chiaro le sperimentazioni del suo tempo in ambito architettonico. A questa sperimentazione dell'architettura sul piano della rappresentazione, segue poi, con il trasferimento di Raffaello a Roma tra il 1508 e il 1509 e l'incontro con Bramante, un interesse concreto rivolto alla costruzione e alla progettazione vera e propria. Da questo punto di vista, il rapporto che si instaura tra Raffaello e Bramante per lo studio dell'architettura antica, conservata all'interno della città, diventa fondamentale punto di partenza per un approfondimento che aprirà strade nuove all'architettura successiva. Con la morte di figure di riferimento, come Bramante appunto, Raffaello diventa la personalità più importante che opera nel campo dell'architettura all'interno dei grandi cantieri pontifici. Si apre così una stagione breve in cui le opere realizzate da Raffaello saranno numerose e importanti: alcune realmente costruite, altre solo progettate".

 

In questo contesto si inserisce la Lettera a Papa Leone X, scritta nel 1519 da Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione, il raffinato autore del Cortegiano (ai due, uniti da amicizia e stima reciproca, è dedicata una mostra al Palazzo Ducale di Urbino, dal titolo Baldassarre Castiglione e Raffaello.Volti e momenti della civiltà di corte), sul tema della tutela e dello studio degli edifici antichi. La premessa al documento è rintracciabile nei fatti avvenuti qualche anno prima: nell'estate del 1515, infatti, Leone X nomina Raffaello præfectus marmorum et lapidum omnium (dal 1514 l'Urbinate già dirigeva la fabbrica di San Pietro). La lettera dedicatoria, la cui prima edizione venne inserita all'interno delle opere di Baldassare Castiglione pubblicate a Padova nel 1733, si apre così: "Sono molti, padre santissimo, i quali misurando col loro piccolo giudizio le cose grandissime che delli romani circa l’arme, e della città di Roma circa al mirabile artificio, ai ricchi ornamenti e alla grandezza degli edifici si scrivono, quelle più presto stimano favolose che vere. Ma altrimenti a me suole avvenire; perché considerando dalle ruine, che ancor si veggono di Roma, la divinità di quegli animi antichi, non istimo fuor di ragione il credere che molte cose a noi paiono impossibili, che ad essi erano facilissime".

 

Nella prima parte Raffaello esalta la grandezza del passato, dichiara le proprie competenze in ambito architettonico e invita il pontefice a intervenire per garantire la tutela dei monumenti antichi, da salvare dal degrado. Nella seconda invece si concentra su questione più tecniche, introducendo anche la descrizione di uno strumento per la misurazione degli edifici antichi di sua invenzione: "Farassi adunque un instromento tondo e piano, come un astrolabio, il diametro del quale sarà due palmi o più o meno, come piace a chi vuole adoperarlo, e la circonferenza di questo istromento si partirà in otto parti giusti, e a ciascuna di quelle parti si porrà il nome d’uno degli otto venti, dividendola in trentadue altre parti picciole, che si chiameranno gradi [...] Con questo adunque misureremo ogni sorte di edificio, di che forma sia, o tondo o quadro o con istrani angoli e svoglimenti quanto dir si possa".

 

"L'importanza della lettera risiede nei principi enunciati all'inizio del testo, in cui Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione sostengono la necessità e l'urgenza di tutelare i monumenti antichi, per trasmetterle alle generazioni future - conclude Zaggia -. Non a caso la lettera, pubblicata alla fine del Settecento, una volta riconosciuto l'autore in Raffaello, diventa il punto di partenza per la legislazione adottata successivamente dagli Stati europei per la protezione del patrimonio artistico e culturale. Erede ultimo di questa tradizione è l'articolo 9 della nostra Costituzione".

 

Fonte/ source:

--- Università di Padova (20/07/2020).

ilbolive.unipd.it/it/news/raffaello-architetto-lettera-pa...

 

4.1). ROMA / Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020): «Raffaello 1520-1483»., "Raffaello architetto e la Lettera a Papa Leone X." S.v., Lettera a papa Leone X di Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione; in: Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020).

 

Nella galleria fotografica potrete scorrere la lettera di Raffaello e Baladassare Castiglione a papa Leone X. Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione, Lettera a papa Leone X, s.d. [1519]. Manoscritto cartaceo costituito da 6 carte di formato 220 x 290 mm circa, ripiegate a formare fascicoletto non rilegato di 24 facciate, di cui 21 scritte, 3 bianche. ASMn, Archivio Castiglioni (acquisto 2016), busta 2, n. 12.

 

Fonte / source:

--- Lettera a papa Leone X di Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione, in: Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020).

www.archiviodistatomantova.beniculturali.it/index.php?it/...

 

4.2). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. Scuderie del Quirinale (05/03 - 02/06/2020), in: Jhon Correa / Facebook (1 July 2020). www.facebook.com/jhon.correa.7549

 

4.3). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Lettera a papa Leone X di Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione. S.v.,

Prof. Cammy Brothers, “Architecture, History, Archaeology: Drawing Ancient Rome in the Letter to Leo X & in Sixteenth-Century Practice,” in Coming About…A Festschrift for John Shearman, ed. Lars R. Jones and Louisa C. Matthew. Cambridge: Harvard University Art Museums (2001): 135–40 [in PDF].

 

Fonte / source:

--- Prof. Cammy Brothers / academia.edu. (2020).

neu.academia.edu/CammyBrothers

 

ROMA ARCHEOLOGICA & RESTAURO ARCHITETTURA 2020. «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. The NYT (18 Aug. 2020) & Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (13 Apr. 2020). S.v., "Raffaello architetto", in: The NYT (06 March 2020); Università di Padova (20/07/2020); Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020); Jhon Correa / Facebook (1 July 2020) & Prof. Cammy Brothers (2001). wp.me/pbMWvy-uQ

 

1). ROME - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. Scuderie del Quirinale (5 March - June 2020).

 

A monographic exhibition with over two hundred masterpieces among paintings, drawings and comparative works, dedicated to Raffaello on the 500th anniversary of his death, which took place in Rome on April 6, 1520 at the age of just 37 years old.

 

The exhibition, which finds inspiration particularly in the Raffaello's fundamental Roman period which consecrated him as an artist of incomparable and legendary greatness, tells his whole complex and articulated creative path with richness of detail through a vast corpus of works, for the first time exposed all together.

 

Many institutions involved have contributed to enrich the exhibition with masterpieces from their collections: among these, in Italy, the National Galleries of Ancient Art, the National Art Gallery of Bologna, the Museum and the Real Bosco di Capodimonte, the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, the Brescia Museums Foundation, and abroad, in addition to the Vatican Museums, the Louvre, the National Gallery of London, the Prado Museum, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Albertina in Vienna, the British Museum, the Royal Collection, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lille.

 

Fonte / source:

--- Scuderie del Quirinale (5 March - June 2020).

www.scuderiequirinale.it/mostra/copia-di-raffaello

 

2.1). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483», in: Intervento delle Scuderie del Quirinale per la maratona del MiBACT "Italia chiamò" / Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (Mar 13, 2020).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8l6q9ywLxY&t=112s

 

2.2). ROME - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. / English / Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (Apr. 13, 2020). www.youtube.com/watch?v=s58gYvvNrKQ&t=61s

 

3). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. Scuderie del Quirinale (05/03 - 02/06/2020).

 

Il 6 aprile 1520 muore a Roma, a trentasette anni, Raffaello Sanzio, il più grande pittore del Rinascimento. La città sembra fermarsi nella commozione e nel rimpianto, mentre la notizia della scomparsa si diffonde con incredibile rapidità in tutte le corti europee. S’interrompeva non solo un percorso artistico senza precedenti, ma anche l’ambizioso progetto di ricostruzione grafica della Roma antica, commissionato dal pontefice, che avrebbe riscattato dopo secoli di oblio e rovina la grandezza e la nobiltà della capitale dei Cesari, affermando inoltre una nuova idea di tutela. Sepolto secondo le sue ultime volontà nel Pantheon, simbolo della continuità fra diverse tradizioni di culto, forse l’esempio più emblematico dell’architettura classica, Raffaello diviene immediatamente oggetto di un processo di divinizzazione, mai veramente interrotto, che ci consegna oggi la perfezione e l’armonia della sua arte.

A distanza di cinquecento anni, questa mostra racconta la sua storia e insieme quella di tutta la cultura figurativa occidentale che l’ha considerato un modello imprescindibile. La mostra, articolata secondo un’idea originale, propone un percorso che ripercorre a ritroso l’avventura creativa di Raffaello, da Roma a Firenze, da Firenze all’Umbria, fino alla nativa Urbino. Un incalzante flash-back che consente di ripensare il percorso biografico partendo dalla sua massima espansione creativa negli anni di Leone X. Risalendo il corso della vita di Raffaello di capolavoro in capolavoro, il visitatore potrà rintracciare in filigrana la prefigurazione di quel linguaggio classico che solo a Roma, assimilata nel profondo la lezione dell’antico, si sviluppò con una pienezza che non ha precedenti nella storia dell’arte. Grazie ad un numero eccezionale di capolavori provenienti dalle maggiori raccolte italiane ed europee, la mostra organizzata dalle Scuderie del Quirinale insieme con le Gallerie degli Uffizi, costituisce un’occasione ineguagliabile per osservare da vicino le invenzioni dell’Urbinate. Il suo breve, luminoso percorso ha cambiato per sempre la storia delle arti e del gusto: Raffaello rivive nelle sale dell’esposizione che lo celebra come genio universale.

 

Fonte / source:

--- Scuderie del Quirinale (05/03 - 02/06/2020).

www.scuderiequirinale.it/mostra/raffaello-000

 

3). ROME «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. The NYT (18 Aug. 2020).

 

ROME - In the Virtual (and Actual) Footsteps of Raphael - In Italy and beyond, the plan was to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Renaissance artist’s death with great fanfare. Then came the pandemic, and the virtual world stepped in. The NYT (18 Aug. 2020).

 

______

Also see:

 

--- ROME - Rome Celebrates the Short, but Beautiful, Life of Raphael - Amid new coronavirus restrictions on museums in Italy, a blockbuster show traces the artistʼs life from finish to start. The NYT (06 March 2020).

www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/arts/raphael-rome-coronavirus....

______

 

This was supposed to be the year of Raphael. Five hundred years after his death at 37, the Renaissance master was due to receive the exalted rollout reserved for artistic superstars: blockbuster museum shows in Rome and London; conferences and lectures at universities and cultural centers around the world; flag-waving and wreath-laying in his Italian hometown, Urbino. There was even the tang of controversy when the advisory committee of Florence’s Uffizi Gallery resigned en masse to protest the inclusion of a precious papal portrait in the big exhibition at Rome’s Scuderie del Quirinale. Then the coronavirus hit and Raphael’s annus mirabilis turned into the world’s annus horribilis.

 

When news of the handsome young artist’s death broke in Rome on April 6, 1520, Pope Leo X wept and church bells tolled all over the city.

Half a millennium later, Rome was in lockdown along with the rest of Italy as deaths from the virus spiraled. The Scuderie show, a once-in-a-lifetime gathering of more than 200 works (120 by Raphael) from all over the world, was forced to shut its doors after just three days, despite having presold a record 70,000 tickets. Raphael’s tomb in the Pantheon was supposed to be adorned with a red rose every day of 2020 to commemorate his death — but the ancient temple was also shuttered because of the virus. Lectures and conferences were canceled, postponed or moved online.

 

Poor Raphael. Last year, the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death came off without a hitch. Raphael’s devotees hoped that this

year’s celebrations would restore the artist’s luster, which has dimmed over the past centuries. When the world fell ill this past winter,

Raphael was one of the casualties. But all is not lost. The Scuderie show reopened on June 2 and will remain up until the end of August. The Scuderie’s president, Mario de Simoni, had expected as many as 500,000 people to see the show pre-virus, but now says the number probably won’t exceed 160,000. For those unable to attend in person, the Scuderie has released an English-language version of its excellent video, recapping the highlights of the exhibition, room by room. You’ll want to hit the pause button in Room 2 to admire two masterpieces on loan from the Louvre: a selfportrait with a friend and the portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, one of the glories of Renaissance portraiture. The close-ups of his paintings of women in Room 6 testify to the artist’s passionate appreciation of feminine beauty. Other Scuderie videos (in Italian) delve into particular aspects of his genius — for instance, the jewelry worn by his female subjects, or the literary world he moved in.

Tour guides such as Clam Tours and Joy of Rome now offer virtual journeys in which small groups can zoom around Italy in the footsteps of the artist. On Sept. 13, for example, you can join the Renaissance specialist Antonio Forcellino and other Italian art experts on Clam Tour’s virtual exploration of Raphael’s incomparable frescoes of the four sibyls at Rome’s Santa Maria della Pace church ($25). Check out Joy of Rome’s free two-minute video about Raphael’s frescoes at the Villa Farnesina to see if you’d like to sign up for a two-and-a-half hour virtual tour (prices on request).

 

Even on a laptop screen, Raphael’s ever-evolving craftsmanship and quicksilver brilliance are apparent. “The year of Raphael has not

been ruined, but simply modified,” said Marzia Faietti, a curator of the Scuderie show. “Since many conferences and lectures have been

put off until next year, in a sense there will be two years of Raphael.”

 

For Italians, a silver lining of the pandemic has been the opportunity to relish their cultural treasures without the tourist hordes. “I cried,”

said Francesca Pagliaro, founder of the Joy of Rome tour company, of the experience of standing alone in the Vatican’s recently reopened

Sala di Costantino — one of four rooms in the museum frescoed by Raphael and his students, and which you can view here. “It’s the first

time in five years that I’ve seen the Stanze without scaffolding — and I had it to myself,” Ms. Pagliaro said. “It was magical.” Americans, barred from European travel for the foreseeable future, will have to make do with all this virtual magic. Not ideal — but Raphael’s magic is powerful, subtle and enduring enough to withstand the challenge.

 

The spirit of Urbino

I can attest to this because back in November 2019, I had the opportunity to follow in Raphael’s actual, not virtual, footsteps in Italy. I stood

shivering in the room where he was born in Urbino in 1483. I knelt at the austere tomb in a niche inside the Pantheon where he was

interred 37 years later. I feasted my eyes not only on paintings and frescoes, but on the humble church and glorious Roman chapel that

attest to his emerging genius for architecture. My pilgrimage would be impossible today — but thanks to the wonders of the internet and

the resourcefulness of Italy’s leading cultural institutions, I can remotely retrace my steps, refresh my memories and relive the

revelations.

 

The first revelation came, aptly, in Urbino’s Palazzo Ducale, the magnificent Renaissance palace constructed in the late 15th century by the

humanist and warlord Federico da Montefeltro that now houses the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche. Judge the magnificence for yourself

by clicking through Google Images’ impressive photo archive. Another click puts you face to face with the museum’s sole work by Raphael

— the haunting portrait known as “La Muta” (“The Mute Woman”). As in so many of his portraits, Raphael posed this stern beauty against a solid dark background, eschewing any visual cues that would evoke a sense of place.

 

How, I wondered, did Urbino influence the art of its most famous son?

 

I posed this question to Peter Aufreiter, then director of the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, when I sat down with him in his office in the

Palazzo Ducale. Mr. Aufreiter’s response was to click on an image of Raphael’s 1507 portrait of Federico’s son, Duke Guidobaldo da

Montefeltro (now in the Uffizi), and then summon me to the window. “Look at the hillside across the valley and that house at the base of

the hill — it’s the same background Raphael put in his painting of Guidobaldo.” You can see exactly what Mr. Aufreiter meant by using the

magnify feature on this online image. Urbino’s steep green landscape, limpid light and crystalline architecture — you can also get a good sense of it here — imprinted themselves on the artist’s young mind and surface repeatedly in his work.

 

Even though Raphael spent most of his career in Florence and Rome, Mr. Aufreiter insists that Urbino, whose cityscape has changed little

since the Renaissance, is where you can feel his spirit most intensely.

 

The spirit is palpable in the artisans’ quarter surrounding the house where Raphael was born, the son of the local court painter Giovanni

Santi. Near the summit of the ski-slope-pitched Via Raffaello, just a stone’s throw from the rather pompous bronze monument of the artist

erected in 1897, the Casa Natale di Raffaello has been preserved as a museum. There’s a rather rudimentary virtual tour on its website, but

you’ll get a better feel for the interior and exterior spaces in this YouTube video. In these bare simple rooms and the deep brick courtyard

they enclose, little imagination is required to dial the scene back to Raphael’s apprenticeship in the last years of the 15th century. Giovanni

Santi’s bottega (workshop) occupied the ground floor, and the future master grew up amid the bustle of painters grinding pigments,

dabbing madonnas and trading in art supplies.

 

Father and son conducted a more exalted commerce at Urbino’s Palazzo Ducale. Fabricated of brick, stone and flawless geometry, this

palace was one of the glories of the Italian Renaissance — not only for its divine architecture, but for the refined elegance of the nobles

who gathered here. This video captures some facets of the palace’s perfection — the way its silhouette pierces the profile of surrounding

hills, the ideal proportions of its noble courtyard, the interplay of volume and decoration in its interior.

 

Baldassare Castiglione set his 1528 masterpiece, “The Book of the Courtier,” in this storied palace — and it was here that the young

Raphael polished his manners, sharpened his wit, cultivated invaluable connections and acquired a lifelong passion for classical antiquity.

Raised at court, Raphael was pursued by the powerful (Popes Julius II and Leo X), esteemed by the brilliant (Castiglione and the Urbinoborn

architect Donato Bramante were close friends) and adored by the beautiful. “Raphael was a very amorous person,” wrote Giorgio Vasari, his first biographer. It was Vasari who originated the claim that Raphael died after an overindulgence in sex with his Roman mistress, Margherita Luti. Whatever really killed him on April 6, 1520, Raphael accomplished much and rose high in his brief life — but he never ceased to be “il maestro Urbinate,” the master from Urbino.

 

A couch-surfing brush-for-hire.

Orphaned when his father died in 1494 (his mother had died three years earlier), Raphael spent his teenage years as an apprentice before

undertaking commissions in Umbria and Tuscany. It’s likely that he was in Florence by 1504 — not as a permanent resident but rather a

couch-surfing brush-for-hire.

 

Though Raphael’s footsteps in Florence are faint, there is no question that he encountered the works of both Leonardo da Vinci and

Michelangelo here — including, very likely, the Mona Lisa, which you can view here, and the marble statue of David, which you can see

and read about on the Accademia’s detailed website. Critics and connoisseurs have been measuring this Renaissance trio against each other for 500 years now. Florence’s Uffizi Gallery is the ideal place to revisit this rivalry, both in person and virtually. After a recent renovation, paintings by the big three have been put on display in two beautifully lit adjoining rooms, and you can find them on the Uffizi website.

 

To my eyes, neither Michelangelo nor Leonardo ever matched the sheer painterly virtuosity of the fringed white collar that Raphael stitched around the neck of the cloth merchant Agnolo Doni, or the faint dent he incised between the young businessman’s anxious brows (use the magnify function to zoom in on this image). Agnolo’s 15-year-old bride, Maddalena Strozzi, hangs beside him, posed like the Mona Lisa with bejeweled hands clasped on her lap, but clad in a kaleidoscope of watered red silk, embroidered blue damask and shimmering gauze. Across the Arno are the glories of the Pitti Palace’s Galleria Palatina — the largest collection of Raphael’s works outside the Vatican. Unlike the Uffizi, the Pitti Palace retains the ambience and layout of an aristocratic residence: Paintings are stacked three deep in gilded high-ceilinged chambers; works are arranged idiosyncratically rather than chronologically; and the lighting can be maddeningly inadequate. Luckily for remote visitors, the lighting is much better on the palace’s website, as well as in the Italian and Spanish language videos about the museum’s treasures, posted here.

 

To the Eternal City

Raphael was summoned to Rome in 1508 by Pope Julius II, and he remained there until his death in 1520. Those 12 final years in the

Eternal City marked the apogee of his career. Painter, architect, entrepreneur, archaeologist, pioneer printmaker, Raphael became the

prototype of the artist as celebrity — the Andy Warhol of the Renaissance.

 

In pre-pandemic Rome, visitors had to endure the lines and tour groups that plagued the Vatican Museums in order to spend a few crowded moments with one of Raphael’s supreme accomplishments: the four papal chambers, known as the Stanze di Raffaello, that the artist and his workshop frescoed between 1508 and 1520. These days, in-person visitors to the reopened Vatican Museums enjoy the Stanze along with the nearby Sistine Chapel in ideal conditions. But remote visits can also be rewarding, thanks to the beautifully produced videos and virtual tours now available on the Vatican’s website. With the click of a mouse, you can hop back and forth between the virtual Sistine Chapel ceiling and the Raphael Stanze and decide for yourself which is the greater masterpiece.

 

“Everything he had in art, he had from me,” the curmudgeonly Michelangelo once grumbled of his younger rival. When you view their

roughly contemporaneous fresco cycles one after the other (or side by side on your computer), it’s clear that Raphael did much more than

borrow. “The School of Athens,” the most celebrated work in the Stanze, has the propulsive tension of a film paused at its climactic scene.

Cast members — a mix of classical philosophers and Renaissance savants — converse, argue, scribble, read and declaim on a sprawling,

but unified, “set” framed by classical architecture. By contrast, Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling, for all its bravura, reads like a series of

static cels.

 

After the Vatican’s Raphael Stanze, a logical next stop, whether actually or virtually, is the Villa Farnesina, with its two beguiling frescoed

loggias — “The Triumph of Galatea” in one of the loggias and “Cupid and Psyche” in the other. Despite the name, this riverside Trastevere landmark is neither a villa nor originally a Farnese property, but rather a suburban pleasure pavilion that Agostino Chigi built for himself in the early 16th century. Chigi brought in the finest artists of the day to fresco the loggias; the result is a delightful crazy quilt of mythological scenes and astrological symbols. Raphael’s “Galatea,” with her wind-whipped tresses, elegantly torqued bare torso and dolphin-powered, scallop-shell raft, has become an icon of High Renaissance grace and wit, and you can see it and other highlights in the villa’s video archive. Even if you don’t speak Italian, the short films are worth delving into for the imagery alone.

 

From painting to architecture

In the last phase of his career, Raphael increasingly turned from painting to architecture. Sadly, his major architectural achievements — the grand unfinished Villa Madama perched on a wooded hill two miles north of the Vatican, and the classically inspired Raphael loggias inside the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace — were inaccessible to the public even before the pandemic, and remain so. To get a sense of Raphael’s architectural genius, make (or click) your way to the church of Santa Maria del Popolo in the piazza of the same name at the northwest edge of the historic center. Like so many transplants, Raphael fell under the spell of the Eternal City’s classical substructure: Rome itself, its layers, its ruins and relics, its ceaseless commerce with the past, became a source of inspiration. The chapel he designed for Chigi inside the Popolo church evinces just how deeply and fruitfully Raphael internalized this inspiration. At first glance, it’s just another church chapel — tight, high, adorned with art and inlaid with precious stone. But on this site you can glimpse the almost miraculous geometry of this space — the interplay of disc and dome, the rhythm set up between the vertical pleats of the Corinthian pilasters and the elongated triangles of the twin red marble pyramids that mark the Chigis' graves. Fittingly, the artist who devoted the final years of his career to measuring, cataloging, preserving and mapping Roman antiquities, was laid to rest in the greatest classical structure to survive the ages: the Pantheon. If a trip to the physical Pantheon is not in the cards, you can drop in with Tom Hanks as your guide in this clip from the film “Angels and Demons.” As for his tomb — an easy-to-miss niche with a statue of the Virgin, modest and vague, presiding over the glassed-in coffin — you can view it here.

 

Marzia Faietti, curator of Rome’s Scuderie show, has been struck by how the virus has enhanced Raphael’s reputation and heightened

awareness of the twin beauties of his art and character. “Young people in particular have reacted with an outpouring of enthusiasm and

benevolence which I really didn’t expect,” she said. “The pandemic has brought suffering to so many, but the year of Raphael will be

remembered more vividly, not despite the virus, but because of it.”

 

Fonte / source:

--- The NYT (18 Aug. 2020).

www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/travel/in-the-virtual-and-actu...

 

Foto / fonte / source:

--- ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483», et al., Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (05/03 - 02/06/2020) (08/2020).

www.youtube.com/user/ScuderieQuirinale/videos

 

4.). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483»., in: "Raffaello architetto e la Lettera a Papa Leone X." Università di Padova (20/07/2020).

 

Artista dal talento straordinario, affermato, corteggiato, desiderato. Questo, ma non solo questo, fu Raffaello Sanzio (1483-1520): l'esperienza come architetto, lo studio e l'impegno per la tutela degli edifici antichi di Roma sono di importanza centrale nel suo percorso, a partire dalla realizzazione di opere come la Cappella Chigi e Villa Madama, fino alla stesura, insieme a Baldassarre Castiglione, della Lettera a Papa Leone X. La grande mostra Raffaello 1520-1483, allestita alle Scuderie del Quirinale di Roma, prorogata fino al 30 agosto, dedica ampio spazio alla sua appassionata attività nel campo dell'architettura.

 

"Sin dai primi anni di formazione, l'interesse di Raffaello per l'architettura, in particolare per quella del mondo antico, è fortemente presente - racconta il professor Zaggia al Bo Live - Fino a sfociare in un'opera fondamentale come Lo sposalizio della vergine, in cui compare un tempio a pianta centrale sullo sfondo che interpreta in modo molto chiaro le sperimentazioni del suo tempo in ambito architettonico. A questa sperimentazione dell'architettura sul piano della rappresentazione, segue poi, con il trasferimento di Raffaello a Roma tra il 1508 e il 1509 e l'incontro con Bramante, un interesse concreto rivolto alla costruzione e alla progettazione vera e propria. Da questo punto di vista, il rapporto che si instaura tra Raffaello e Bramante per lo studio dell'architettura antica, conservata all'interno della città, diventa fondamentale punto di partenza per un approfondimento che aprirà strade nuove all'architettura successiva. Con la morte di figure di riferimento, come Bramante appunto, Raffaello diventa la personalità più importante che opera nel campo dell'architettura all'interno dei grandi cantieri pontifici. Si apre così una stagione breve in cui le opere realizzate da Raffaello saranno numerose e importanti: alcune realmente costruite, altre solo progettate".

 

In questo contesto si inserisce la Lettera a Papa Leone X, scritta nel 1519 da Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione, il raffinato autore del Cortegiano (ai due, uniti da amicizia e stima reciproca, è dedicata una mostra al Palazzo Ducale di Urbino, dal titolo Baldassarre Castiglione e Raffaello.Volti e momenti della civiltà di corte), sul tema della tutela e dello studio degli edifici antichi. La premessa al documento è rintracciabile nei fatti avvenuti qualche anno prima: nell'estate del 1515, infatti, Leone X nomina Raffaello præfectus marmorum et lapidum omnium (dal 1514 l'Urbinate già dirigeva la fabbrica di San Pietro). La lettera dedicatoria, la cui prima edizione venne inserita all'interno delle opere di Baldassare Castiglione pubblicate a Padova nel 1733, si apre così: "Sono molti, padre santissimo, i quali misurando col loro piccolo giudizio le cose grandissime che delli romani circa l’arme, e della città di Roma circa al mirabile artificio, ai ricchi ornamenti e alla grandezza degli edifici si scrivono, quelle più presto stimano favolose che vere. Ma altrimenti a me suole avvenire; perché considerando dalle ruine, che ancor si veggono di Roma, la divinità di quegli animi antichi, non istimo fuor di ragione il credere che molte cose a noi paiono impossibili, che ad essi erano facilissime".

 

Nella prima parte Raffaello esalta la grandezza del passato, dichiara le proprie competenze in ambito architettonico e invita il pontefice a intervenire per garantire la tutela dei monumenti antichi, da salvare dal degrado. Nella seconda invece si concentra su questione più tecniche, introducendo anche la descrizione di uno strumento per la misurazione degli edifici antichi di sua invenzione: "Farassi adunque un instromento tondo e piano, come un astrolabio, il diametro del quale sarà due palmi o più o meno, come piace a chi vuole adoperarlo, e la circonferenza di questo istromento si partirà in otto parti giusti, e a ciascuna di quelle parti si porrà il nome d’uno degli otto venti, dividendola in trentadue altre parti picciole, che si chiameranno gradi [...] Con questo adunque misureremo ogni sorte di edificio, di che forma sia, o tondo o quadro o con istrani angoli e svoglimenti quanto dir si possa".

 

"L'importanza della lettera risiede nei principi enunciati all'inizio del testo, in cui Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione sostengono la necessità e l'urgenza di tutelare i monumenti antichi, per trasmetterle alle generazioni future - conclude Zaggia -. Non a caso la lettera, pubblicata alla fine del Settecento, una volta riconosciuto l'autore in Raffaello, diventa il punto di partenza per la legislazione adottata successivamente dagli Stati europei per la protezione del patrimonio artistico e culturale. Erede ultimo di questa tradizione è l'articolo 9 della nostra Costituzione".

 

Fonte/ source:

--- Università di Padova (20/07/2020).

ilbolive.unipd.it/it/news/raffaello-architetto-lettera-pa...

 

4.1). ROMA / Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020): «Raffaello 1520-1483»., "Raffaello architetto e la Lettera a Papa Leone X." S.v., Lettera a papa Leone X di Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione; in: Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020).

 

Nella galleria fotografica potrete scorrere la lettera di Raffaello e Baladassare Castiglione a papa Leone X. Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione, Lettera a papa Leone X, s.d. [1519]. Manoscritto cartaceo costituito da 6 carte di formato 220 x 290 mm circa, ripiegate a formare fascicoletto non rilegato di 24 facciate, di cui 21 scritte, 3 bianche. ASMn, Archivio Castiglioni (acquisto 2016), busta 2, n. 12.

 

Fonte / source:

--- Lettera a papa Leone X di Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione, in: Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020).

www.archiviodistatomantova.beniculturali.it/index.php?it/...

 

4.2). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. Scuderie del Quirinale (05/03 - 02/06/2020), in: Jhon Correa / Facebook (1 July 2020). www.facebook.com/jhon.correa.7549

 

4.3). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Lettera a papa Leone X di Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione. S.v.,

Prof. Cammy Brothers, “Architecture, History, Archaeology: Drawing Ancient Rome in the Letter to Leo X & in Sixteenth-Century Practice,” in Coming About…A Festschrift for John Shearman, ed. Lars R. Jones and Louisa C. Matthew. Cambridge: Harvard University Art Museums (2001): 135–40 [in PDF].

 

Fonte / source:

--- Prof. Cammy Brothers / academia.edu. (2020).

neu.academia.edu/CammyBrothers

 

Be content with singleness.

 

Though I'm needy, me myself is the one who is always here, to accompany me unconditionally.

 

The fact that she is always there in the mirror as usual as the sun I see every morning. The long acquaintance may results in my neglect of myself and the world i see everyday.

  

Sometimes when we see something, it actually requires some inner effort, to see it by our mind's eyes.

 

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched.

They must be felt with the heart." ---Helen Adams Keller

 

We see it, describe it, absorb it and, digest it.

Therefore the object that we see may really come into our inner eyes, could be internalized.

 

Although it is another year of being single, i feel no loneliness for there are myself, my family, my beloved people, and, the beautiful world embracing me.

 

I am alone, yet not lonely.

  

Wonderwerp #60

Studio Loos, Den Haag 2015

 

Based loosely on Ganzfeld experiments (a technique used in parapsychology in the 1970s as a way of invoking telepathy), Color Field Immersion involves masking the audience with semi-transparent blindfolds onto which light projections are mapped. Similar to sensory deprivation, Color Field Immersion provides perceptual deprivation, replacing the entirety of each audience member’s visual field with washes of color, line, and movement – often inducing hallucinations as the brain seeks to replace lost stimuli. Flipping the traditional performer-audience relationship, the internalized experience becomes the location of the performance. Combined with rich, textural soundscapes, Color Field Immersion creates a deeply immersive perceptual architecture of sound and vision.

 

Doron Sadja is an American artist, composer, and curator whose work explores modes of perception and the experience of sound, light, and space. Working primarily with multichannel spatialized sound – combining pristine electronics with lush romantic synthesizers, extreme frequencies, dense noise, and computer-enhanced acoustic instruments, Sadja creates post-human, hyper-emotive sonic architecture. Although each of Sadja’s works are striking in their singular and focused approach, his output is diverse: spanning everything from immersive multichannel sound pieces to sexually provacative performance / installation works, and stroboscopic smoke, mirror, laser, and projection shows. Doron has published music on 12k, ATAK, and Shinkoyo records, and has performed/exhibited at PS1 MoMa, Miami MOCA, D’amelio Terras Gallery, Cleveland Museum of Art, Issue Project Room, and Roulette amongst others. Sadja co-founded Shinkoyo Records and the West Nile performing arts venue in Brooklyn (RIP), and has curated various new music/sound festivals around NYC, including the multichannel SOUNDCORRIDORS Festival, Easy Not Easy, John Cage Musicircus, and more.

The Doll Project is a series of conceptual digital photographs that uses fashion dolls to embody the negative messages the media gives to young girls. Though it would not be fair to blame it all on Barbie, there have been many instances in which she has come dangerously close. I chose to use Barbie dolls because they are miniature mannequins, emblems of the fashion world writ small, a representation of our culture's impossible standards of beauty scaled to one sixth actual size. The little pink scale and How To Lose Weight book are both real Barbie accessories from the 1960s. They are recurring motifs in the pictures in the series, symbolizing the ongoing dissatisfaction many girls and women feel about their weight and body image. The dolls' names, Ana and Mia, are taken from internet neologisms coined by anorexic and bulimic girls who have formed online communities with the unfortunate purpose of encouraging each other in their disordered eating. With each passing era, Ana and Mia are younger and younger, and the physical ideal to which they aspire becomes more unattainable. They internalize the unrealistic expectations of a society that digitally manipulates images of women in fashion and beauty advertisements and value their own bodies only as objects for others to look at and desire.

 

Read more about the project here:

tiffanygholar.blogspot.com/2008/08/doll-project.html

 

Purchase prints here:

society6.com/TiffanyGholar

 

Buy the book on Amazon and Etsy.

Just like anyone on social media, I like to fill my feed with happy images and highlights from my personal and professional life….but it’s time to start talking about the REAL stuff too!

Although it may seem like I have all of the happiness and confidence in the world if you look at my social media accounts, I have struggled with self esteem issues my entire life.

As a child, I grew up in an abusive environment filled with unresolved generational traumas where I was made to feel like I was the problem in myfamily, and unknowingly internalized that I as an individual was bad.

As with most abusive households, mine was an environment where nothing felt safe….even being myself. So, I began to develop a laundry list of unhealthy coping mechanisms, and a state of “survival mode” became my baseline as I entered my developmental years.

I felt so powerless under my father’s endless emotional abuse and violent outbursts at home, that I not only began to believe that type of behavior was normal, but also constantly felt the need to gain agency and assert my own will wherever possible. Which, obviously, did not go over well with my peers and teachers, and only caused me to more deeply internalize that I must be bad as I began to establish my sense of self outside of my family.

 

Like millions of other people with unresolved trauma, as things got worse for me emotionally, I turned to food for comfort, and quickly found myself significantly larger than almost everyone around me in elementary school. Something that my peers and father often made note of in cruel ways that hurt me so deeply and only further caused me to internalize that I must be bad.

Eventually, all of the shame that I felt during my childhood snowballed into deep depression and uncontrollable anxiety that I tried to heal with piles of prescriptions from different doctors that couldn’t seem to figure out what was “wrong” with me. When, in reality there was nothing “wrong” with me. I simply needed to find peace and be reminded that I AM GOOD.

 

Over the years - especially as I became an expectant mother at 17 years old and faced so much judgement for my choice to leave school in order to work while I was a pregnant - I found that excelling at my job served as an excellent surrogate for the validation I was seeking in my personal relationships, and I began to throw myself into my career, both as a way to support myself and my daughter as a single parent, and as a way to prove to myself through tangible means like paychecks and promotions that I was good.

It wasn’t until all of the unresolved trauma that I had been trying to bury with work began to manifest itself physically, that I finally accepted it was time to begin trying to show myself the love I knew I needed in order for my body to heal….even if the concept of being lovable still seemed totally forgeign to me, and I had no idea where to begin!

 

Abuse is a hard cycle to break, and self love is a hard lesson to learn. So, my path to healing was far from linear, or easy, but once I made that commitment to find and nurture the parts of myself that I loved, amazing things began to happen!

I’m pretty sure my friends and family thought I was losing my mind more than finding myself at first! But, as I began to explore myself as an energetic being and learn more about inner child and shadow work, I discovered that I wasn’t bad. I had just learned to protect (rather dysfunctionally) the vibrant, loving and vulnerable little Melissa who had learned that she needed to stay hidden in order to stay safe so long ago!

As anyone who has recovered from abuse can tell you, the hardest part about breaking the cycle is having no example of how to be any other way. My life had been filled with negativity for so long that I struggled to find myself in a peaceful situation even as I worked to heal myself.

As anyone who has recovered from abuse can also tell you, you just get used to it.

The pain and chaos becomes your baseline, and even when you are consciously in a state of growth away from that state of being, it’s all too easy to find yourself slipping back into relationships that make you feel most comfortable - even if they are simply toxic AF. Which is exactly what I was doing…..until I met Nate.

 

Before I met Nate, I had no idea what it felt like to be seen completely, and not only be accepted for who I was, but adored for it.

Most importantly though, Nate made me feel safe.

For the first time in my life, I was able to stop just surviving, and started thriving in ways I had forgotten that I was capable of.

It was like I had been trudging through mud my entire life, and was finally walking on solid ground for the first time when I finally learned to accept his love.

I began to see the entire world differently.

Instead of an endless stream of stressful situations and impending disasters, I started to see my life as promising and full of possibilities.

I began to see myself differently.

Instead of someone I felt I should be ashamed of, I started to see myself as someone kind and capable that I was proud to share with other people.

 

Once that shift occurred, I began to accomplish so many more things I felt that I could be proud of!

I learned to show myself the kindness I wish I had been shown, and found how freeing it can be to see the world through a less defensive lense.

I launched a successful private chef business out of nothing but my passion for food while I was still waiting tables and had nothing but my intuition to guide me.

I grew that little business into something that could provide a better life, and was finally able to start working for myself.

I built second, and third, businesses that provided me with more opportunities to do what I love, and a real sense that I was capable of so much good.

I started to be able to show up as my authentic self in social situations with less fear of being “seen” and judged for it.

But, even with all of those things to be proud of, I still held so much shame and anxiety around the idea that I was still somehow fundamentally bad at my core, and it was only a matter of time before I, and everyone else, would start to see it again.

 

The way that I had once used paychecks and promotions to provide myself with tangible evidence that I was good, I began to use images on social media as a tangible way for me to remind myself of all the positives when the negative self talk began to sneak into my mind.

At the time, I didn’t really think much into my motivation for posting about my life’s highlights on social media, because after all, it’s what everyone else does too and, let’s be honest - who doesn’t like getting likes?!

But when the pandemic hit last year and my ability to produce content that I felt I could use to prove to myself that I AM good was halted, it forced me to really examine the deeper emotional reasons that I felt it was so important for me to only share things that aligned with an image of positivity and success.

Being positive, and constantly focused on growth, is a huge part of who I am at my core - but it’s far from who I am all the time.

While I spent hours scrolling through social media during the early days of quarantine, I felt completely paralyzed as I watched other people post photos and videos of themselves functioning in ways I couldn’t even imagine in the moment.

It might sound silly, but when I felt the most lost in my emotions, just being able to just create and share a post about how to make a healthy smoothie made me feel like I was at least doing one thing I could be proud of, no matter how ashamed of myself I felt in the moment.

 

Thankfully, resilience seems to be my super power (dysfunctional as some of my survival mechanisms may be.) So, it didn’t take long for me to snap out of that depression and into that familiar feeling of “survival mode” that allowed me to begin working on ways to keep my businesses alive.

Being able to snap myself out of that paralyzing depression reminded me that I am a survivor and gave me the energy I needed to keep moving forward, but it also triggered all kinds of unhealthy coping mechanisms that I had worked so hard to move away from.

On the outside, I was pivoting like a pro. But, internally, it felt like my emotional state was falling to pieces.

Even though I knew that almost everyone else was struggling with their emotions as well, I just couldn’t bring myself to authentically share any of that darkness on social media.

I shared the smoothies.

I shared the healthy dinners.

I shared all of the milestones as I worked to rebuild my businesses.

Because that’s what made me feel safe.

 

What I didn’t share, was the insecurity.

What I didn't share, were the days that I could barely motivate myself to eat, let alone create something beautiful, or inspire anyone else to embrace taking care of themselves.

What I didn’t share, was the fear that everyone might see me at my worst and judge me for it.

What I didn’t share, was that I was really posting all of that for me, to prove to myself that I was still worthy of love - even though the only one who was even questioning that, was me!

Once I realized that I was using images on social media as a mask, I knew it was time to start healing those pieces of me that I still felt that I needed to hide.

I also knew that I wanted to share my story more authentically on social media somehow. But, I didn’t quite know how…..until I saw a post on Facebook from a local photographer working on a project about women sharing their authentic stories on social media, and it just spoke to me!

 

The concept was an unstyled shoot that showed the authentic me, accompanied by an essay to do the same - which seemed simple. But, it proved to be such a greater struggle than I had imagined!

The essay I could edit, and I’ve always loved to write, so I wasn’t worried about that. But, the photoshoot made me SO nervous!

Having grown up in a home where appearance and projecting the right image seemed to be of paramount importance, the idea of photos that might not portray me in the best light being published on the internet triggered all kinds of insecurities for me.

On the day of the shoot, I just chose to wear what was comfortable - the things I actually wear when I’m not trying to look a certain way.

I didn’t style my hair, or bother with more than my everyday makeup that consists of tinted moisturizer, a bit of bronzer and a little mascara.

If it were any regular day I would have felt perfectly comfortable with the way I looked.

In fact, I had made plans to meet a friend for dinner right after the shoot and felt great about the way I looked for that experience! But, the idea of being photographed like that, especially outside by the water where the wind would inevitably reveal angles of my face that I find unflattering, gave me anxiety for days before the shoot.

 

When I arrived for the shoot, I was nervous and far from the outgoing, confident Melissa that usually arrives at photoshoots when I’m styled perfectly and feeling my best.

As we walked through the quiet woods with the snow crunching beneath my boots, I realized that I felt so nervous because I had shown up to this photoshoot as the little Melissa that I had learned to hide and protect.

As we began to shoot, I started to feel sad, and strange that this would be the side of me captured on camera for this project. But, I quickly realized that it wasn’t sadness for the situation at hand that I was feeling.

It was sadness for little Melissa who had internalized that she wasn’t worth being seen just as she was.

Throughout the shoot, I couldn’t seem to shake that sense of sadness and I worried the photos would be ruined because of it.

But, when I saw the photos from the shoot a few weeks later, I realized that as we were walking and talking throughout the shoot, the images that Nikki captured began to tell a story.

The first photos looked posed and happy. But, of course they did. Because that’s my favorite mask, especially in front of the camera! So, I obviously felt fine about those being shared.

But, then there were some awkward attempts at me actually being natural in front of a camera. Which completely triggered all of the negative self-talk that typically leads to me taking great measures to avoid photos like that from ever seeing the light of day.

As we moved on, I could see the vulnerability in my eyes as I tried to let my guard down, and I felt so exposed knowing that side of myself would be shared.

Once we were by the water though, I started to see a sense of ease, and even strength emerging in the photos. Even if they weren’t my best angles and my hair was a mess, it looked like ME!

Not the styled, polished version of myself that I feel safest showing the world, but the authentic me that I have no problem sharing with the people I feel safe with.

 

Don’t get me wrong - I very authentically do LOVE to get dressed up, and genuinely think it’s fun to play with personal styling. It’s just fun for me! But, participating in this project has really helped me to reflect on how much I had been using my image as a mask to protect myself from negative self-talk.

As we all know now, wearing a mask can keep us safe, but it also prevents us from being fully seen.

Yes, taking off your mask can be a risk, just like letting other people see you completely can be a risk.

But, as we all know now after a year full of physical masking, nothing feels better than FINALLY being able to take off your mask and just breathe!

ROMA ARCHEOLOGICA & RESTAURO ARCHITETTURA 2020. «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. The NYT (18 Aug. 2020) & Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (13 Apr. 2020). S.v., "Raffaello architetto", in: The NYT (06 March 2020); Università di Padova (20/07/2020); Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020); Jhon Correa / Facebook (1 July 2020) & Prof. Cammy Brothers (2001). wp.me/pbMWvy-uQ

 

1). ROME - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. Scuderie del Quirinale (5 March - June 2020).

 

A monographic exhibition with over two hundred masterpieces among paintings, drawings and comparative works, dedicated to Raffaello on the 500th anniversary of his death, which took place in Rome on April 6, 1520 at the age of just 37 years old.

 

The exhibition, which finds inspiration particularly in the Raffaello's fundamental Roman period which consecrated him as an artist of incomparable and legendary greatness, tells his whole complex and articulated creative path with richness of detail through a vast corpus of works, for the first time exposed all together.

 

Many institutions involved have contributed to enrich the exhibition with masterpieces from their collections: among these, in Italy, the National Galleries of Ancient Art, the National Art Gallery of Bologna, the Museum and the Real Bosco di Capodimonte, the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, the Brescia Museums Foundation, and abroad, in addition to the Vatican Museums, the Louvre, the National Gallery of London, the Prado Museum, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Albertina in Vienna, the British Museum, the Royal Collection, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lille.

 

Fonte / source:

--- Scuderie del Quirinale (5 March - June 2020).

www.scuderiequirinale.it/mostra/copia-di-raffaello

 

2.1). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483», in: Intervento delle Scuderie del Quirinale per la maratona del MiBACT "Italia chiamò" / Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (Mar 13, 2020).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8l6q9ywLxY&t=112s

 

2.2). ROME - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. / English / Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (Apr. 13, 2020). www.youtube.com/watch?v=s58gYvvNrKQ&t=61s

 

3). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. Scuderie del Quirinale (05/03 - 02/06/2020).

 

Il 6 aprile 1520 muore a Roma, a trentasette anni, Raffaello Sanzio, il più grande pittore del Rinascimento. La città sembra fermarsi nella commozione e nel rimpianto, mentre la notizia della scomparsa si diffonde con incredibile rapidità in tutte le corti europee. S’interrompeva non solo un percorso artistico senza precedenti, ma anche l’ambizioso progetto di ricostruzione grafica della Roma antica, commissionato dal pontefice, che avrebbe riscattato dopo secoli di oblio e rovina la grandezza e la nobiltà della capitale dei Cesari, affermando inoltre una nuova idea di tutela. Sepolto secondo le sue ultime volontà nel Pantheon, simbolo della continuità fra diverse tradizioni di culto, forse l’esempio più emblematico dell’architettura classica, Raffaello diviene immediatamente oggetto di un processo di divinizzazione, mai veramente interrotto, che ci consegna oggi la perfezione e l’armonia della sua arte.

A distanza di cinquecento anni, questa mostra racconta la sua storia e insieme quella di tutta la cultura figurativa occidentale che l’ha considerato un modello imprescindibile. La mostra, articolata secondo un’idea originale, propone un percorso che ripercorre a ritroso l’avventura creativa di Raffaello, da Roma a Firenze, da Firenze all’Umbria, fino alla nativa Urbino. Un incalzante flash-back che consente di ripensare il percorso biografico partendo dalla sua massima espansione creativa negli anni di Leone X. Risalendo il corso della vita di Raffaello di capolavoro in capolavoro, il visitatore potrà rintracciare in filigrana la prefigurazione di quel linguaggio classico che solo a Roma, assimilata nel profondo la lezione dell’antico, si sviluppò con una pienezza che non ha precedenti nella storia dell’arte. Grazie ad un numero eccezionale di capolavori provenienti dalle maggiori raccolte italiane ed europee, la mostra organizzata dalle Scuderie del Quirinale insieme con le Gallerie degli Uffizi, costituisce un’occasione ineguagliabile per osservare da vicino le invenzioni dell’Urbinate. Il suo breve, luminoso percorso ha cambiato per sempre la storia delle arti e del gusto: Raffaello rivive nelle sale dell’esposizione che lo celebra come genio universale.

 

Fonte / source:

--- Scuderie del Quirinale (05/03 - 02/06/2020).

www.scuderiequirinale.it/mostra/raffaello-000

 

3). ROME «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. The NYT (18 Aug. 2020).

 

ROME - In the Virtual (and Actual) Footsteps of Raphael - In Italy and beyond, the plan was to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Renaissance artist’s death with great fanfare. Then came the pandemic, and the virtual world stepped in. The NYT (18 Aug. 2020).

 

______

Also see:

 

--- ROME - Rome Celebrates the Short, but Beautiful, Life of Raphael - Amid new coronavirus restrictions on museums in Italy, a blockbuster show traces the artistʼs life from finish to start. The NYT (06 March 2020).

www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/arts/raphael-rome-coronavirus....

______

 

This was supposed to be the year of Raphael. Five hundred years after his death at 37, the Renaissance master was due to receive the exalted rollout reserved for artistic superstars: blockbuster museum shows in Rome and London; conferences and lectures at universities and cultural centers around the world; flag-waving and wreath-laying in his Italian hometown, Urbino. There was even the tang of controversy when the advisory committee of Florence’s Uffizi Gallery resigned en masse to protest the inclusion of a precious papal portrait in the big exhibition at Rome’s Scuderie del Quirinale. Then the coronavirus hit and Raphael’s annus mirabilis turned into the world’s annus horribilis.

 

When news of the handsome young artist’s death broke in Rome on April 6, 1520, Pope Leo X wept and church bells tolled all over the city.

Half a millennium later, Rome was in lockdown along with the rest of Italy as deaths from the virus spiraled. The Scuderie show, a once-in-a-lifetime gathering of more than 200 works (120 by Raphael) from all over the world, was forced to shut its doors after just three days, despite having presold a record 70,000 tickets. Raphael’s tomb in the Pantheon was supposed to be adorned with a red rose every day of 2020 to commemorate his death — but the ancient temple was also shuttered because of the virus. Lectures and conferences were canceled, postponed or moved online.

 

Poor Raphael. Last year, the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death came off without a hitch. Raphael’s devotees hoped that this

year’s celebrations would restore the artist’s luster, which has dimmed over the past centuries. When the world fell ill this past winter,

Raphael was one of the casualties. But all is not lost. The Scuderie show reopened on June 2 and will remain up until the end of August. The Scuderie’s president, Mario de Simoni, had expected as many as 500,000 people to see the show pre-virus, but now says the number probably won’t exceed 160,000. For those unable to attend in person, the Scuderie has released an English-language version of its excellent video, recapping the highlights of the exhibition, room by room. You’ll want to hit the pause button in Room 2 to admire two masterpieces on loan from the Louvre: a selfportrait with a friend and the portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, one of the glories of Renaissance portraiture. The close-ups of his paintings of women in Room 6 testify to the artist’s passionate appreciation of feminine beauty. Other Scuderie videos (in Italian) delve into particular aspects of his genius — for instance, the jewelry worn by his female subjects, or the literary world he moved in.

Tour guides such as Clam Tours and Joy of Rome now offer virtual journeys in which small groups can zoom around Italy in the footsteps of the artist. On Sept. 13, for example, you can join the Renaissance specialist Antonio Forcellino and other Italian art experts on Clam Tour’s virtual exploration of Raphael’s incomparable frescoes of the four sibyls at Rome’s Santa Maria della Pace church ($25). Check out Joy of Rome’s free two-minute video about Raphael’s frescoes at the Villa Farnesina to see if you’d like to sign up for a two-and-a-half hour virtual tour (prices on request).

 

Even on a laptop screen, Raphael’s ever-evolving craftsmanship and quicksilver brilliance are apparent. “The year of Raphael has not

been ruined, but simply modified,” said Marzia Faietti, a curator of the Scuderie show. “Since many conferences and lectures have been

put off until next year, in a sense there will be two years of Raphael.”

 

For Italians, a silver lining of the pandemic has been the opportunity to relish their cultural treasures without the tourist hordes. “I cried,”

said Francesca Pagliaro, founder of the Joy of Rome tour company, of the experience of standing alone in the Vatican’s recently reopened

Sala di Costantino — one of four rooms in the museum frescoed by Raphael and his students, and which you can view here. “It’s the first

time in five years that I’ve seen the Stanze without scaffolding — and I had it to myself,” Ms. Pagliaro said. “It was magical.” Americans, barred from European travel for the foreseeable future, will have to make do with all this virtual magic. Not ideal — but Raphael’s magic is powerful, subtle and enduring enough to withstand the challenge.

 

The spirit of Urbino

I can attest to this because back in November 2019, I had the opportunity to follow in Raphael’s actual, not virtual, footsteps in Italy. I stood

shivering in the room where he was born in Urbino in 1483. I knelt at the austere tomb in a niche inside the Pantheon where he was

interred 37 years later. I feasted my eyes not only on paintings and frescoes, but on the humble church and glorious Roman chapel that

attest to his emerging genius for architecture. My pilgrimage would be impossible today — but thanks to the wonders of the internet and

the resourcefulness of Italy’s leading cultural institutions, I can remotely retrace my steps, refresh my memories and relive the

revelations.

 

The first revelation came, aptly, in Urbino’s Palazzo Ducale, the magnificent Renaissance palace constructed in the late 15th century by the

humanist and warlord Federico da Montefeltro that now houses the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche. Judge the magnificence for yourself

by clicking through Google Images’ impressive photo archive. Another click puts you face to face with the museum’s sole work by Raphael

— the haunting portrait known as “La Muta” (“The Mute Woman”). As in so many of his portraits, Raphael posed this stern beauty against a solid dark background, eschewing any visual cues that would evoke a sense of place.

 

How, I wondered, did Urbino influence the art of its most famous son?

 

I posed this question to Peter Aufreiter, then director of the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, when I sat down with him in his office in the

Palazzo Ducale. Mr. Aufreiter’s response was to click on an image of Raphael’s 1507 portrait of Federico’s son, Duke Guidobaldo da

Montefeltro (now in the Uffizi), and then summon me to the window. “Look at the hillside across the valley and that house at the base of

the hill — it’s the same background Raphael put in his painting of Guidobaldo.” You can see exactly what Mr. Aufreiter meant by using the

magnify feature on this online image. Urbino’s steep green landscape, limpid light and crystalline architecture — you can also get a good sense of it here — imprinted themselves on the artist’s young mind and surface repeatedly in his work.

 

Even though Raphael spent most of his career in Florence and Rome, Mr. Aufreiter insists that Urbino, whose cityscape has changed little

since the Renaissance, is where you can feel his spirit most intensely.

 

The spirit is palpable in the artisans’ quarter surrounding the house where Raphael was born, the son of the local court painter Giovanni

Santi. Near the summit of the ski-slope-pitched Via Raffaello, just a stone’s throw from the rather pompous bronze monument of the artist

erected in 1897, the Casa Natale di Raffaello has been preserved as a museum. There’s a rather rudimentary virtual tour on its website, but

you’ll get a better feel for the interior and exterior spaces in this YouTube video. In these bare simple rooms and the deep brick courtyard

they enclose, little imagination is required to dial the scene back to Raphael’s apprenticeship in the last years of the 15th century. Giovanni

Santi’s bottega (workshop) occupied the ground floor, and the future master grew up amid the bustle of painters grinding pigments,

dabbing madonnas and trading in art supplies.

 

Father and son conducted a more exalted commerce at Urbino’s Palazzo Ducale. Fabricated of brick, stone and flawless geometry, this

palace was one of the glories of the Italian Renaissance — not only for its divine architecture, but for the refined elegance of the nobles

who gathered here. This video captures some facets of the palace’s perfection — the way its silhouette pierces the profile of surrounding

hills, the ideal proportions of its noble courtyard, the interplay of volume and decoration in its interior.

 

Baldassare Castiglione set his 1528 masterpiece, “The Book of the Courtier,” in this storied palace — and it was here that the young

Raphael polished his manners, sharpened his wit, cultivated invaluable connections and acquired a lifelong passion for classical antiquity.

Raised at court, Raphael was pursued by the powerful (Popes Julius II and Leo X), esteemed by the brilliant (Castiglione and the Urbinoborn

architect Donato Bramante were close friends) and adored by the beautiful. “Raphael was a very amorous person,” wrote Giorgio Vasari, his first biographer. It was Vasari who originated the claim that Raphael died after an overindulgence in sex with his Roman mistress, Margherita Luti. Whatever really killed him on April 6, 1520, Raphael accomplished much and rose high in his brief life — but he never ceased to be “il maestro Urbinate,” the master from Urbino.

 

A couch-surfing brush-for-hire.

Orphaned when his father died in 1494 (his mother had died three years earlier), Raphael spent his teenage years as an apprentice before

undertaking commissions in Umbria and Tuscany. It’s likely that he was in Florence by 1504 — not as a permanent resident but rather a

couch-surfing brush-for-hire.

 

Though Raphael’s footsteps in Florence are faint, there is no question that he encountered the works of both Leonardo da Vinci and

Michelangelo here — including, very likely, the Mona Lisa, which you can view here, and the marble statue of David, which you can see

and read about on the Accademia’s detailed website. Critics and connoisseurs have been measuring this Renaissance trio against each other for 500 years now. Florence’s Uffizi Gallery is the ideal place to revisit this rivalry, both in person and virtually. After a recent renovation, paintings by the big three have been put on display in two beautifully lit adjoining rooms, and you can find them on the Uffizi website.

 

To my eyes, neither Michelangelo nor Leonardo ever matched the sheer painterly virtuosity of the fringed white collar that Raphael stitched around the neck of the cloth merchant Agnolo Doni, or the faint dent he incised between the young businessman’s anxious brows (use the magnify function to zoom in on this image). Agnolo’s 15-year-old bride, Maddalena Strozzi, hangs beside him, posed like the Mona Lisa with bejeweled hands clasped on her lap, but clad in a kaleidoscope of watered red silk, embroidered blue damask and shimmering gauze. Across the Arno are the glories of the Pitti Palace’s Galleria Palatina — the largest collection of Raphael’s works outside the Vatican. Unlike the Uffizi, the Pitti Palace retains the ambience and layout of an aristocratic residence: Paintings are stacked three deep in gilded high-ceilinged chambers; works are arranged idiosyncratically rather than chronologically; and the lighting can be maddeningly inadequate. Luckily for remote visitors, the lighting is much better on the palace’s website, as well as in the Italian and Spanish language videos about the museum’s treasures, posted here.

 

To the Eternal City

Raphael was summoned to Rome in 1508 by Pope Julius II, and he remained there until his death in 1520. Those 12 final years in the

Eternal City marked the apogee of his career. Painter, architect, entrepreneur, archaeologist, pioneer printmaker, Raphael became the

prototype of the artist as celebrity — the Andy Warhol of the Renaissance.

 

In pre-pandemic Rome, visitors had to endure the lines and tour groups that plagued the Vatican Museums in order to spend a few crowded moments with one of Raphael’s supreme accomplishments: the four papal chambers, known as the Stanze di Raffaello, that the artist and his workshop frescoed between 1508 and 1520. These days, in-person visitors to the reopened Vatican Museums enjoy the Stanze along with the nearby Sistine Chapel in ideal conditions. But remote visits can also be rewarding, thanks to the beautifully produced videos and virtual tours now available on the Vatican’s website. With the click of a mouse, you can hop back and forth between the virtual Sistine Chapel ceiling and the Raphael Stanze and decide for yourself which is the greater masterpiece.

 

“Everything he had in art, he had from me,” the curmudgeonly Michelangelo once grumbled of his younger rival. When you view their

roughly contemporaneous fresco cycles one after the other (or side by side on your computer), it’s clear that Raphael did much more than

borrow. “The School of Athens,” the most celebrated work in the Stanze, has the propulsive tension of a film paused at its climactic scene.

Cast members — a mix of classical philosophers and Renaissance savants — converse, argue, scribble, read and declaim on a sprawling,

but unified, “set” framed by classical architecture. By contrast, Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling, for all its bravura, reads like a series of

static cels.

 

After the Vatican’s Raphael Stanze, a logical next stop, whether actually or virtually, is the Villa Farnesina, with its two beguiling frescoed

loggias — “The Triumph of Galatea” in one of the loggias and “Cupid and Psyche” in the other. Despite the name, this riverside Trastevere landmark is neither a villa nor originally a Farnese property, but rather a suburban pleasure pavilion that Agostino Chigi built for himself in the early 16th century. Chigi brought in the finest artists of the day to fresco the loggias; the result is a delightful crazy quilt of mythological scenes and astrological symbols. Raphael’s “Galatea,” with her wind-whipped tresses, elegantly torqued bare torso and dolphin-powered, scallop-shell raft, has become an icon of High Renaissance grace and wit, and you can see it and other highlights in the villa’s video archive. Even if you don’t speak Italian, the short films are worth delving into for the imagery alone.

 

From painting to architecture

In the last phase of his career, Raphael increasingly turned from painting to architecture. Sadly, his major architectural achievements — the grand unfinished Villa Madama perched on a wooded hill two miles north of the Vatican, and the classically inspired Raphael loggias inside the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace — were inaccessible to the public even before the pandemic, and remain so. To get a sense of Raphael’s architectural genius, make (or click) your way to the church of Santa Maria del Popolo in the piazza of the same name at the northwest edge of the historic center. Like so many transplants, Raphael fell under the spell of the Eternal City’s classical substructure: Rome itself, its layers, its ruins and relics, its ceaseless commerce with the past, became a source of inspiration. The chapel he designed for Chigi inside the Popolo church evinces just how deeply and fruitfully Raphael internalized this inspiration. At first glance, it’s just another church chapel — tight, high, adorned with art and inlaid with precious stone. But on this site you can glimpse the almost miraculous geometry of this space — the interplay of disc and dome, the rhythm set up between the vertical pleats of the Corinthian pilasters and the elongated triangles of the twin red marble pyramids that mark the Chigis' graves. Fittingly, the artist who devoted the final years of his career to measuring, cataloging, preserving and mapping Roman antiquities, was laid to rest in the greatest classical structure to survive the ages: the Pantheon. If a trip to the physical Pantheon is not in the cards, you can drop in with Tom Hanks as your guide in this clip from the film “Angels and Demons.” As for his tomb — an easy-to-miss niche with a statue of the Virgin, modest and vague, presiding over the glassed-in coffin — you can view it here.

 

Marzia Faietti, curator of Rome’s Scuderie show, has been struck by how the virus has enhanced Raphael’s reputation and heightened

awareness of the twin beauties of his art and character. “Young people in particular have reacted with an outpouring of enthusiasm and

benevolence which I really didn’t expect,” she said. “The pandemic has brought suffering to so many, but the year of Raphael will be

remembered more vividly, not despite the virus, but because of it.”

 

Fonte / source:

--- The NYT (18 Aug. 2020).

www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/travel/in-the-virtual-and-actu...

 

Foto / fonte / source:

--- ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483», et al., Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (05/03 - 02/06/2020) (08/2020).

www.youtube.com/user/ScuderieQuirinale/videos

 

4.). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483»., in: "Raffaello architetto e la Lettera a Papa Leone X." Università di Padova (20/07/2020).

 

Artista dal talento straordinario, affermato, corteggiato, desiderato. Questo, ma non solo questo, fu Raffaello Sanzio (1483-1520): l'esperienza come architetto, lo studio e l'impegno per la tutela degli edifici antichi di Roma sono di importanza centrale nel suo percorso, a partire dalla realizzazione di opere come la Cappella Chigi e Villa Madama, fino alla stesura, insieme a Baldassarre Castiglione, della Lettera a Papa Leone X. La grande mostra Raffaello 1520-1483, allestita alle Scuderie del Quirinale di Roma, prorogata fino al 30 agosto, dedica ampio spazio alla sua appassionata attività nel campo dell'architettura.

 

"Sin dai primi anni di formazione, l'interesse di Raffaello per l'architettura, in particolare per quella del mondo antico, è fortemente presente - racconta il professor Zaggia al Bo Live - Fino a sfociare in un'opera fondamentale come Lo sposalizio della vergine, in cui compare un tempio a pianta centrale sullo sfondo che interpreta in modo molto chiaro le sperimentazioni del suo tempo in ambito architettonico. A questa sperimentazione dell'architettura sul piano della rappresentazione, segue poi, con il trasferimento di Raffaello a Roma tra il 1508 e il 1509 e l'incontro con Bramante, un interesse concreto rivolto alla costruzione e alla progettazione vera e propria. Da questo punto di vista, il rapporto che si instaura tra Raffaello e Bramante per lo studio dell'architettura antica, conservata all'interno della città, diventa fondamentale punto di partenza per un approfondimento che aprirà strade nuove all'architettura successiva. Con la morte di figure di riferimento, come Bramante appunto, Raffaello diventa la personalità più importante che opera nel campo dell'architettura all'interno dei grandi cantieri pontifici. Si apre così una stagione breve in cui le opere realizzate da Raffaello saranno numerose e importanti: alcune realmente costruite, altre solo progettate".

 

In questo contesto si inserisce la Lettera a Papa Leone X, scritta nel 1519 da Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione, il raffinato autore del Cortegiano (ai due, uniti da amicizia e stima reciproca, è dedicata una mostra al Palazzo Ducale di Urbino, dal titolo Baldassarre Castiglione e Raffaello.Volti e momenti della civiltà di corte), sul tema della tutela e dello studio degli edifici antichi. La premessa al documento è rintracciabile nei fatti avvenuti qualche anno prima: nell'estate del 1515, infatti, Leone X nomina Raffaello præfectus marmorum et lapidum omnium (dal 1514 l'Urbinate già dirigeva la fabbrica di San Pietro). La lettera dedicatoria, la cui prima edizione venne inserita all'interno delle opere di Baldassare Castiglione pubblicate a Padova nel 1733, si apre così: "Sono molti, padre santissimo, i quali misurando col loro piccolo giudizio le cose grandissime che delli romani circa l’arme, e della città di Roma circa al mirabile artificio, ai ricchi ornamenti e alla grandezza degli edifici si scrivono, quelle più presto stimano favolose che vere. Ma altrimenti a me suole avvenire; perché considerando dalle ruine, che ancor si veggono di Roma, la divinità di quegli animi antichi, non istimo fuor di ragione il credere che molte cose a noi paiono impossibili, che ad essi erano facilissime".

 

Nella prima parte Raffaello esalta la grandezza del passato, dichiara le proprie competenze in ambito architettonico e invita il pontefice a intervenire per garantire la tutela dei monumenti antichi, da salvare dal degrado. Nella seconda invece si concentra su questione più tecniche, introducendo anche la descrizione di uno strumento per la misurazione degli edifici antichi di sua invenzione: "Farassi adunque un instromento tondo e piano, come un astrolabio, il diametro del quale sarà due palmi o più o meno, come piace a chi vuole adoperarlo, e la circonferenza di questo istromento si partirà in otto parti giusti, e a ciascuna di quelle parti si porrà il nome d’uno degli otto venti, dividendola in trentadue altre parti picciole, che si chiameranno gradi [...] Con questo adunque misureremo ogni sorte di edificio, di che forma sia, o tondo o quadro o con istrani angoli e svoglimenti quanto dir si possa".

 

"L'importanza della lettera risiede nei principi enunciati all'inizio del testo, in cui Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione sostengono la necessità e l'urgenza di tutelare i monumenti antichi, per trasmetterle alle generazioni future - conclude Zaggia -. Non a caso la lettera, pubblicata alla fine del Settecento, una volta riconosciuto l'autore in Raffaello, diventa il punto di partenza per la legislazione adottata successivamente dagli Stati europei per la protezione del patrimonio artistico e culturale. Erede ultimo di questa tradizione è l'articolo 9 della nostra Costituzione".

 

Fonte/ source:

--- Università di Padova (20/07/2020).

ilbolive.unipd.it/it/news/raffaello-architetto-lettera-pa...

 

4.1). ROMA / Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020): «Raffaello 1520-1483»., "Raffaello architetto e la Lettera a Papa Leone X." S.v., Lettera a papa Leone X di Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione; in: Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020).

 

Nella galleria fotografica potrete scorrere la lettera di Raffaello e Baladassare Castiglione a papa Leone X. Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione, Lettera a papa Leone X, s.d. [1519]. Manoscritto cartaceo costituito da 6 carte di formato 220 x 290 mm circa, ripiegate a formare fascicoletto non rilegato di 24 facciate, di cui 21 scritte, 3 bianche. ASMn, Archivio Castiglioni (acquisto 2016), busta 2, n. 12.

 

Fonte / source:

--- Lettera a papa Leone X di Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione, in: Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020).

www.archiviodistatomantova.beniculturali.it/index.php?it/...

 

4.2). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. Scuderie del Quirinale (05/03 - 02/06/2020), in: Jhon Correa / Facebook (1 July 2020). www.facebook.com/jhon.correa.7549

 

4.3). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Lettera a papa Leone X di Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione. S.v.,

Prof. Cammy Brothers, “Architecture, History, Archaeology: Drawing Ancient Rome in the Letter to Leo X & in Sixteenth-Century Practice,” in Coming About…A Festschrift for John Shearman, ed. Lars R. Jones and Louisa C. Matthew. Cambridge: Harvard University Art Museums (2001): 135–40 [in PDF].

 

Fonte / source:

--- Prof. Cammy Brothers / academia.edu. (2020).

neu.academia.edu/CammyBrothers

 

Gazing upon the blooming landscape,

Seeing once more the beauty and perfection,

A peacefulness is internalized for the last time,

Leaving a final, sweet, impression.

 

Home has been a haven of light,

Every step on the land sang divine.

Moving forward brings delight,

Yet moving on brings tears to the eyes.

 

The sky, the trees, all above,

The earth, the flora, all below;

Familiar things of love surrounding

Arise again and become known.

 

But never does the the past quite leave,

It carries on and becomes today.

The weight and lightness of all loved and lost

Forever in heart and spirit stay.

  

Picture taken with Vivitar S1 28-90mm F2.8-35 lens on Sony Nex-5n + Zhongyi Lens Turbo II.

Like Us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/AndroidJonesart

 

www.androidjones.com

 

This began as a live performance painting during my 2011 Seeing is Believing Tour. I was digitally projecting my art onto the white cover of a 60 foot dome at the Harmony Festival in Northern California. The projector was mounted on top of my Night Rainbow mobile art studio and my workspace was in the back of the truck. As I sat down to work that night I had no idea what to paint, then one of my close friends and favorite painters, Xavi Panneton, came up to say hello. He proceeded to share an amazing story with me about a metaphysical experience he had the night before; here is Xavi's story in his own words:

 

"I felt the sonic rumble of the space rising beneath me like the engines of shuttle jets revving up. All was lifting in a giant invisible escalator into the upper regions of hyperspace. In front of me was a giant being made of writhing Chinese dragons forming itself into one giant dragon. I was the ultimate explosion of ferocity rearing it's wrath right at me, The dragons are the symbol for teaching me to ground myself and hold still in the storm. They said "Just be calm and hold still. Do not fear what you are feeling right now. This is the truth of who you are." I felt scared at first, but once I internalized what they were telling me, it felt empowering and exhilarating."

 

I was so inspired by his revelation that it became the subject matter I painted that night.

 

Harmony of Dragons, 2011.

Wonderwerp #60

Studio Loos, Den Haag 2015

 

Based loosely on Ganzfeld experiments (a technique used in parapsychology in the 1970s as a way of invoking telepathy), Color Field Immersion involves masking the audience with semi-transparent blindfolds onto which light projections are mapped. Similar to sensory deprivation, Color Field Immersion provides perceptual deprivation, replacing the entirety of each audience member’s visual field with washes of color, line, and movement – often inducing hallucinations as the brain seeks to replace lost stimuli. Flipping the traditional performer-audience relationship, the internalized experience becomes the location of the performance. Combined with rich, textural soundscapes, Color Field Immersion creates a deeply immersive perceptual architecture of sound and vision.

 

Doron Sadja is an American artist, composer, and curator whose work explores modes of perception and the experience of sound, light, and space. Working primarily with multichannel spatialized sound – combining pristine electronics with lush romantic synthesizers, extreme frequencies, dense noise, and computer-enhanced acoustic instruments, Sadja creates post-human, hyper-emotive sonic architecture. Although each of Sadja’s works are striking in their singular and focused approach, his output is diverse: spanning everything from immersive multichannel sound pieces to sexually provacative performance / installation works, and stroboscopic smoke, mirror, laser, and projection shows. Doron has published music on 12k, ATAK, and Shinkoyo records, and has performed/exhibited at PS1 MoMa, Miami MOCA, D’amelio Terras Gallery, Cleveland Museum of Art, Issue Project Room, and Roulette amongst others. Sadja co-founded Shinkoyo Records and the West Nile performing arts venue in Brooklyn (RIP), and has curated various new music/sound festivals around NYC, including the multichannel SOUNDCORRIDORS Festival, Easy Not Easy, John Cage Musicircus, and more.

The Doll Project is a series of conceptual digital photographs that uses fashion dolls to embody the negative messages the media gives to young girls. Though it would not be fair to blame it all on Barbie, there have been many instances in which she has come dangerously close. I chose to use Barbie dolls because they are miniature mannequins, emblems of the fashion world writ small, a representation of our culture's impossible standards of beauty scaled to one sixth actual size. The little pink scale and How To Lose Weight book are both real Barbie accessories from the 1960s. They are recurring motifs in the pictures in the series, symbolizing the ongoing dissatisfaction many girls and women feel about their weight and body image. The dolls' names, Ana and Mia, are taken from internet neologisms coined by anorexic and bulimic girls who have formed online communities with the unfortunate purpose of encouraging each other in their disordered eating. With each passing era, Ana and Mia are younger and younger, and the physical ideal to which they aspire becomes more unattainable. They internalize the unrealistic expectations of a society that digitally manipulates images of women in fashion and beauty advertisements and value their own bodies only as objects for others to look at and desire.

 

Read more about the project here:

tiffanygholar.blogspot.com/2008/08/doll-project.html

 

Purchase prints here:

society6.com/TiffanyGholar

 

Buy the book on Amazon and Etsy.

At stanbonnar.net/10-2/ :

 

For any alter-verse (including the entirety of what we think of as ‘the universe'), the relativity of its constituents is not one of difference as such, but rather is as the mode of difference called understanding. By manoeuvring away from difference as such, we are able to place the emphasis on the relative comportment of things, rather than on their simple difference from each other. Rather than ‘different things’ as such, we are now able to deal with environments of understanding.

 

We have assumed that every ‘Other’ is itself an alter-environment of understanding, which for the sake of clarity we are limiting to this primitive ‘quadri-verse’ of otherness – red, yellow, green, violet. We further assume that RYGV is an environment of environments which has come into existence as a ‘thing in and for itself’, as a feature on the surface of the infinite singularity of understanding. (A moment of quantum foam coming into existence at Planck length would be an analogous view from the real world, although in our view space and time do not actually exist for the prior state of absolute singleness.)

 

So by whatever impulse or reason, (as we have already earlier described), the quadri-verse RYGV has become actualized (not realized), and in that same elementary moment, instantaneously, is formed the entire temporal structure of the quadri-verse – until at some moment, for some reason it ceases. But why the term ‘Temporality’?

 

It is so because it is the rational construct in moments of that which would otherwise be impossible to rationalize. Namely the state of absolute singleness which is prior to the condition of existence. But these moments are not yet moments in time as we would recognize it, but are rather moments of the turning of one understanding to another, that we have already named ‘actuations’.

 

The reason why these are an instantaneous and non-finite accumulation within the elementary moment of the alter-verse, is because as each other under-stands the others, it understands that which they are actually already are, which is the ‘each other’ that under-stands. No time passes – it is an instantaneous accumulation of under-standing, each moment an internal construct of the prior.

 

But why ‘Myself’ and why ‘Spacelight’?

 

What we have just been describing in the preceding paragraphs, concerns the moments of actual under-standing as an ‘Ourself’ – a simple grouping of understandings that accumulate as a momentary instantaneous internalizing of the elementary moment. It is the temporal structure of Ourself at at given moment. But Ourself does not comprehend all the complexity of prior under-standings which are its constitution. (It would be like you or me trying to grasp the infinitely prior environments of understanding that comprise the atoms of our bodies.)

 

So instead, Ourself comprehends itself as a ‘Myself’, which is spaced from its Otherness. This difference from its ownmost constitution is what Myself comprehends as a photon of light – a moment of spacelight – coming from the other which it comprehends as ‘being out there in the distance for a moment of time’.

 

Each Other Myself comprehends in exactly the same way for a fixed system such as we have invented here, and would go on doing so for an eternity of their own time.

Miss SL Press Presentation - Paper Couture.

www.missslorganization.net

MISS SL ♛ Ireland 2016.

  

MISS SL ♛ Ireland 2016, Aealla Illyar chose the beautiful painting, "L'Etoile (The Star)" by Degas. When she looks at this painting, she says it brings her joy and peace. MISS SL ♛ Ireland studied dance from the age of three to the age of 19, and performed in a dance company. She has feelings of joy and peace that she experienced dancing that are brought back to her when she contemplates this painting.

  

MISS SL ♛ Ireland describes herself as somewhat shy and tends to internalize her feelings, but participating in the Miss SL competition has helped her rediscover and grow in confidence. This painting represents stepping out of the shadows and into the light thanks to that renewed sense of confidence.

 

MISS SL ♛ Ireland's crinkled paper ballerina dress is from Wicca's Wardrobe "Princess Petite" Dress and Collar, AZOURY Argippina Ballet Shoes, Lode Balts Headpiece that resemble paper flowers and Meva Flower Spheres.

  

The Cause

MISS SL ♛ Ireland, Aealla Illyar chosen cause is Domestic Violence Awareness, representing the group, "Women Thrive Worldwide" and their campaign, "Stop The Violence. Stepping out of the shadows is something women do every day when they make the decision to leave a violent relationship.

  

The World Health Organization reports that an astounding one in three women worldwide experiences physical or sexual violence. In some countries, that rate jumps to 70 percent.

  

These statistics are shocking but domestic violence is still clouded in shame and victims are forced to hide in the shadows until they die or get help.

 

For MISS SL ♛ Ireland, the Degas painting, L'Etoile (The Star), is a good representation of victims leaving the shadows and stepping out on their own for the first time. We need to bring this issue out of the shadows and continue to encourage women to talk about their experiences and grow confident in themselves once again.

for Yoko Only fanzine #7, 1984

Interview by Brian Hendel

 

BH: First of all on behalf of all the members of “Yoko Only” I would like to thank you for doing this interview.

 

YO: “Yoko Only” is a thrill for me too.

 

BH: Let’s start there then. You said recently that last week’s October 9th marked a milestone in your life and that you and Sean were hit by reality. What did you mean by that?

 

YO: Well, the past several years was like a dream. You just feel more real now, the fact that John is not around. It’s like the initial shock is over and it’s more difficult emotionally. Is this reality?... that sort of feeling.

 

BH: ‘Every Man Has A Woman’ is out. Are you happy about the way it turned out? It’s been over a year in the making.

 

YO: The real high was when we made it and when we first heard it and said great, great. But then there was a long waiting time. But I get letters from fans saying we bought it and like it on whatever, then I check the stamp on the envelope. “Ohio, okay they’re getting it there, too.” That’s my barometer.

 

BH: “Dogtown” is my favourite track. Alternative Boxes is the only group or artist who is virtually unknown. Did you discover them for this project?

 

YO: Yes, I’m very happy about that one. It’s a nice story, too. The story is, when I did “Dogtown” on Season of Glass.. he heard it, he liked it, and made a demo tape so he could present it to a record company to get a contract. All his friends told him he was crazy to do it and they were right. He didn’t get a record contract. So the tape was sitting there. Then Rolling Stone did a little article about “Here comes another Yoko Ono this time with all these artists,” etc. He read that and thought “Why not send the cassette to Yoko, maybe she would put it on the album.” I usually don’t open any cassettes because there are some crazy people out there. I get letters like “I’m the guy who wrote Double Fantasy and Milk and Honey so when are you going to send me my royalty?” That kind of thing. So I don’t listen to cassettes when they’re sent. The office just returns them automatically. But for some reason I opened this one and listened to it. I didn’t expect it to be so good. I immediately called him and said, “Hey, you’re in.”

 

BH: Was he excited about it?

 

YO: I think so. The excitement was coming over the phone.

 

BH: Why did you chose to remix that one. I heard the 12” and it’s great.

 

YO: I just wanted to try something special for the club mix.

 

BH: Sean does a fantastic job on “It’s Alright.” I understand he was a little shy about it at first. Did you have to coax him into letting that track go out?

 

YO: Yes. It seems like Sean went up and down about this. Initially, I think he felt good about recording it. So, I thought if I brought home a remixed cassette for him to listen to, a rough remix, he’s love it. But as soon as he heard the intro, he said “Noooo!” and “By the way, you’re not putting this out.” Oh, I see! So I left it at that and thought all that effort for nothing. But then gradually, he started to feel good about it. Then I got “Mommy, when are you putting my song out?” “Why isn’t it out yet?”, you know. So maybe it was lucky that we had to wait this long.

 

BH: When he sees himself on MTV, what is his reaction?

 

YO: I think he is still shy about it. Each time he sees himself on MTV he’s looking very pensive… that ‘thinking’ look. Sean what are you thinking? “Oh nothing.” He won’t let me on, but he was probably a bit worried about the reaction of his classmates.

 

BH: I just saw the “Everyman Has A Woman Who Loves Him” video and was surprised to see that you used a different couple since all your work has been autobiographical.

 

YO: I had a great laugh when I saw that one. My guess is that it was filmed in Brighton, and it’s so working class… very, very English… I enjoyed it in that sense. I didn’t have anything to do with it, by the way. First I was going to make the video myself just like the other ones. I had memories of all the different shots. I planned it in my head and had it all set up in my mind. I went into the studio to edit the bits. That’s when I noticed that id didn’t feel the same. I felt very, very strange about it all, about watching John’s image and watching him talk and sing on the screen, and to edit all that to make a film. In fact, I had two night of nightmares, right off. It wasn’t worth it. I didn’t want to get too let down by all this and I decided to leave it to someone else to make it. I think it’s a good change anyway.

 

BH: Now you have the album and the video’s out. Do you see this productivity continuing in the future as it is now?

 

YO: I don’t know when to stop! I’m one of those workaholics and when I finish a product I’m already thinking of the next. But I think timing wise you have to think of the timing out there too. So I will go and record the next album when the timing is a bit better. I shouldn’t do it now because then I’ll be waiting for it to come out. It’s that one.

 

BH: Do you feel more comfortable with Polydor rather then Apple or Geffen? I remember you used to say that at the Apple business meetings they would “accidentally” forgot to put your albums on the list. Do you feel any of that pressure now?

 

YO: I would say that most record companies are the same when you get down to it. There are a few good friends in there who like your songs, but then there are the others who are just cut and dry business people. Usually the business people win in a company. So that’s how it is. But the game is all the same everywhere so I don’t particularly feel terrible about this company.

BH: Do you think that you hold back a lot of your more experimental work to make the product more commercial?

 

YO: Definitely. People write to me and say, “Look, your work was always artistic but was for a small audience. Why do you want to make it commercial and get a big audience? It was good when it was for a small audience.” They don’t understand that if you are not commercial, the record companies simply wouldn’t want to know you. They wouldn’t give you a contract for the next record. That means I can’t communicate. It’s as simple as that.

 

BH: That’s what I’m afraid of. I heart that Polydor was dropping a lot of their artists. And I was like once they have Milk and Honey forget it, there she goes.

 

YO: I know. There are many angles that fans don’t think about.

 

BH: George Harrison and Ringo Starr both lost theirs.

 

YO: I suppose if they want to record… but I know it’s not that easy. Then some people might say “You guys are rich so why don’t you start your own companies.” But there is such a thing as a distribution network and even if you make the record with your own company, you have to finally rely on one of these distributors to get to the shops. If you try to compete with them, they’ll cut you down to your size. What are you doing here, you know. So you have to rely on one of those, and that’s how it’s set up.

 

BH: When did you first realize that your art was different from the norm and you were going to have that Limited audience?

 

YO: Each time I was surprised (laughs). Let’s put it that way.

 

BH: Your individuality was evident even as far back as your college days where you were the first female to enter the Philosophy course. Did your actions get you in a lot of trouble back then?

 

YO: I suppose it did. But I’m certainly not a masochist, you know, neither was John. Both of us always felt we were doing something the world would understand and share with good feelings. If we thought we were going to be attacked for what we did, in the way they were attacked, we probably wouldn’t have done half the things we did. Because neither of us wanted pain. In that sense you could say that we were a couple of optimists. Whenever we came up with an idea, we were so inspired and excited over it that we couldn’t wait to share it with the world. “It’s great! Let’s do it!” Then we find out that the world didn’t get the point at all. “Why don’t they understand it? Are they crazy?” It was like that. Each time we sincerely thought that the world would understand our idea. I know that you can’t believe it, probably, but that’s how it was.

 

BH: Do you get that way now in the studio? Where your working on a song and you’re thinking that this is the one, this is it.

 

YO: This is it! And then someone makes a strange comment, strange to me, but what they think as normal, you know. I do have to rely on my own judgement. I’m not going to rely on someone else’s. Maybe to some people my judgement seems a little out of synch. Of course, to me it isn’t.

 

BH: Like when I first heard “My Man.” I really thought that that was going to be your first hit. And then I’m playing it for people and they’re saying- “Babalu, what’s a babalu?”

 

YO: I thought it was going to make it too… with all those nice hooks and whatever. I thought, “This is it, it’s great.”

 

BH: And the “My Man” video which was fantastic.

 

YO: I know. I like what I do. I literally get inspired by what I do. And I want to keep being myself. I don’t want to be intimidated into being somebody else.

 

BH: Going way back. Do you think your mother’s attitude that you should hide your emotions caused you to be even more emotionally expressive in your work?

YO: It’s not so much my mother, you know. It’s this society, I mean the world, that teaches you to hide your emotions. The result is, all of us are a bit like that. We do have a tendency to hide our emotions… especially men. Primal scream as part of the 60s liberation movement helped men to express their emotions. We learnt how to externalize our emotions in the 60s. In the 70, we internalized what we learnt in the 60s. Now in the 80s we are pretty normal. We are used to the idea of letting it all hang out. The society accepts people to be more emotional. But I, and the others who were born in the 30s, 40s and 50s, were brought up in the society which hiding our emotions was considered proper.

 

BH: So in 1956 you and your family came to Scarsdale, N.Y. and were you rebellious then? How did you discover New York City and the underground art scene?

 

YO: By chance. I’m sure that being rebellious is one of my labels, but I never considered myself as being rebellious. I keep trying to be a good girl. Finally you get sick and tired of that and one day you stick your tongue out. Just for a second, you know, and very quietly. But then they go Aha! I saw you, I saw you. And those are the moments that people are counting, as milestone events. So what do you do about that. They don’t remember how boringly good I was in between.

 

BH: You met George Maciunas and those people and did you feel that they were heading in the same direction as you were?

 

YO: Well, they were the people who didn’t mind accepting me… who accepted me without any resistance. Which was nice.

 

BH: Was that the first time you felt accepted as an artist?

 

YO: Come to think of it, yes. I didn’t realize it but that’s true.

 

BH: What are some of your memories back then in your smoky loft down in the village?

YO: Oh, that… there again I was just all excited about the creative aspect of it and the inspiration. From outside it might of looked like I was trying to live up a certain lifestyle, to create a hip scene or something, but my lifestyle was created only for its convenience and economy. Like wearing a black sweater and corduroy pants and flat shoes was practical. Living in a loft was cheaper. Everything was done for a good, practical reason.

 

BH: Were your parents trying to help you back then and you said that you wanted to do it on your own?

 

YO: Well, no. I think the feeling was mutual. They didn’t want to help me and I didn’t want their help.

 

BH: You once said, if I may quote that you hated men: “Men have an unusual talent for making a bore out of everything they touch.”

 

YO: When I did I say that! I don’t know how I expressed it at the time but I’m not responsible (laughter). Anyway, it’s true that I felt that men, because they controlled the society and they established certain rules and regulations for themselves and others that they were limited by their own regulations as well. There was a certain rigidity that I observed in men that I didn’t like.

 

BH: Do you think that that was a result of your first two marriages?

 

YO: No. They were pretty supportive of my ventures. When you try to get a job in the society, in that sort of situation I felt men’s rigidity a lot. I felt that a lot in the New York Art scene in the late 50s and early 60s. They don’t like taking chances. Even now, businessmen are like that.

 

BH: Did you feel that a lot of galleries did not present your work because you were a woman? Did they have to include you in group shows?

 

YO: No. On the contrary, men liked to go group shows for one reason or another. Herding instinct maybe? But they did not include me in the shows, and I had to do it alone most of the time. That’s how I became famous not as a group but as Yoko Ono.

 

BH: How did you decide to hold concerts in your loft? Was that a regular thing or did you start that?

 

YO: I think mine was the first. It just happened because no producer in those days wanted to give a concert in a regular concert hall for avant-garde composers, and it was very expensive to rent a regular hall ourselves. It was a practical idea. The chance I took was to do it in the loft section where most people did not think we could collect an audience. “Nobody in their right mind would go downtown for a concert.” “You couldn’t get people to come to a fifth floor walk-up,” etc. But I didn’t want to listen to them. I did it and it was successful.

 

BH: You did a lot of concerts in 1973 and ’74. Was this something you had wanted to do again for a long time?

 

YO: Yes. You see, since I was doing concerts almost every month somewhere before I met John, it was very difficult for me after I met John. My natural way of doing things was to do a concert once or twice a month. That’s how I was. But when we got together, John and I, people expected me to not do any concerts. That was the funny thing, but that’s how it was. And I missed doing concerts. So when we were separated in ’73 and ’74, it was natural for me to go back doing concerts again. I just went back being my old self.

 

BH: This was different. This was rock and roll.

 

YO: Yes, this time, it was rock plus. At Kenny’s Castaways, it was a very small hall, not like what they usually use for a rock concert, I mean, it was not even a hall, it was more like a hole (laughs). So I did my thing. I mixed the experience I had with rock but in between the songs I would do all sorts of little events. Like pass an empty bucket and then tell a story about the bucket, or whatever. It was closer to performance art with a rock backing band.

BH: I heart it was packed every night. There was lines going around the building.

 

YO: I know it was amazing. A friend of mine who was then an editor of Rolling Stone, couldn’t get in. She was furious, and I was saying “I’m sorry, I’m sorry I don’t know.”

 

BH: Did you have fears on opening night that no one was going to show up?

 

YO: I didn’t think that because it was a very small place (laughter). Somebody will show up. And, of course, I didn’t really mind it. I was never concerned about those things since I come from a different place like Fluxus and even pre-Fluxus.

 

BH: You had a concert once and didn’t give the location in the ads. Didn’t about two people show up?

 

YO: Something like that. Once I did a concert and one person came to listen to it, and it was beautiful. That was in the early 60s, and there was a subway strike that day, incidentally. Anyway, in Kenny’s Castaways it was a full house every day. Surprise, surprise. I liked doing that show. As it was during our separation and I was alone so it was easier for me to do concerts again. Maybe it wasn’t easy for the world (laughs), but, you know, I enjoyed it. The world was raising eyebrows saying “What does she think she’s doing?”

 

BH: All they said was that you were alone up in the Dakota.

 

YO: That’s another thing. It was interesting that they wanted to perceive me as the forsaken woman who is crying in the Dakota. That hurt me a little. Pride, you know. Now that sort of pride is vanity, it’s not necessarily a good thing to be carrying around. So it’s alright to get hurt on that sort of pride level. But still it was a bit humiliating, people saying “You must be heartbroken”, or whatever. Just naturally assuming that if a man and a woman are separated it must be the woman who is suffering. So anyway, I went through that period and what else?

 

BH: I read a review from one of your 1973 concerts in which the reviewer was furious that you were wearing hot pants and leather boots up to your knees and singing songs about female liberation. I always thought that was funny.

 

YO: I wanted to get out of the stereotype feminist.

 

BH: When one reporter asked you about your outfit you said that it was the “new feminist uniform.”

 

YO: (Laughs) Because I think that women or men should be allowed to wear what we feel comfortable in. The feminist idea was not to uniform us but to free us from things like that.

 

BH: If you had a chance like in the song “The Way We Were,” to do it all over again do you think you would?

 

YO: Um… I may have been dumb enough to do it all over again yes (laughs). I think that John and I could have been a bit wiser. But then again if we were we wouldn’t have been us. Some couples are like that. They never cause any trouble, they never make waves. But that wasn’t us.

 

BH: You say that you wear your sunglasses to hide your still sorrowful emotions. When you stop wearing them will it symbolize your complete re-emergence from pain?

 

YO: Sometimes I feel that it may be rude that I’m wearing my glasses and I take them off. Then I regret it later because I feel that I exposed myself too much. So I’m just going to be hiding myself until I feel comfortable to come out. I remember the day we picked these glasses the first time. It was in 1980 John and went to Saks Fifth Avenue and out of different sunglasses I picked these out and put them on for a try, and I remember John saying, “Umm, good.” I just wondered sometimes what that meant. I didn’t wear these glasses in 1980 you know. I bought them and forgot about them. I started to wear them in 1981. I’ve gotten used to wearing these now. One day I’ll take them off and that will probably be like 1986.

BH: Why then?

 

YO: Because I think I’ll finish all the past things by then. Somehow I feel that by then I would be a different person.

 

BH: Is that the new life you recently said that you are going to start?

 

YO: That’s my true feeling. I will start anew life but I don’t know how. By that I mean I don’t want to be stuck in this rut of always thinking about the past, or some project connected with the past. So I’d like to force myself to open up to the future whatever that is.

 

BH: Everything that you do in the future will probably be linked or refer back to your past.

 

YO: Well, I don’t know about that. You see I’m an optimist. Since I didn’t immediately run away from what happened, I’m probably going to come out of it. Some people repress it and then it’s never over. Of course, this is a wishful thinking as well, but I vaguely have a nice warm feeling about the future. Like all rainbow colours, and all of us being joyful and happy. But that’s a long way ahead maybe. In a realistic sense, I don’t think about my future in detail. I can’t, and I never have. I’m leaving it to fate while wishing well.

 

BH: What if someone landed from another planet and asked someone who Yoko Ono is, what would you want him to hear?

 

YO: I will ask him or her “How does it look from out there?” I don’t know. I think I’m an entity which is trying to grow to its full extent.

 

BH: And finally, how do you feel about having a club like “Yoko Only?”

 

YO: I’m just watching it grow. It’s great.

  

Reprinted from Yoko Only Fanzine #7

   

REMEMBER YOKO ONLY

by Brian Hendel

 

Some of you may remember my labor of love that started way back in the early 80’s called YOKO ONLY. For those of you who missed it, it was a fanzine I created as a forum for those who respected and admired the work of Yoko Ono. At the time, we needed a place to share our thoughts without the prejudices of our friends and families who probably thought we were all crazy. Remember, this was long before Yoko was having number one dance hits, art retrospectives in museums around the world, and glowing reviews from the mainstream press. The “Dragon Lady” stamp was still sticking. I felt we all needed a “comfort zone” where we could come together. We were on to something… and we were tired of waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.

 

Looking back, YOKO ONLY was a little rough in those early days, and, some may say, amateurish – but it had an infectious spirit that truly glowed. Honestly, I was only about 15 or 16 when it started, and I knew nothing about publishing a magazine. There were no computers to fix typos or fancy design programs to help make polished layouts. I will always remember those early days back in my New Jersey high school sneaking into the faculty offices to use the Xerox machine and school supplies to copy, collate, and staple thousands of pages together without getting caught. It wasn’t until years later that I would discover the joys of using a professional printer.

 

Early on, Yoko took notice of the endeavor and was quick to share her insight, support, and priceless archival material with people who really got what she was about. I’m sure we all agree that our lives have been enriched beyond words for having discovered Yoko’s incredible life and art. It’s a special bond we have, so I’m happy to share some of the material that first appeared on the pages of YOKO ONLY with you today here on the internet.

 

This was the very first interview Yoko and I did together way back in 1984. It was the beginning of a very special friendship that continues to this day. I’ll never forget being a nervous teenager borrowing the tape recorder from my college and heading to the Dakota. I had been doing the magazine for a couple of years, and Yoko had invited me to come to the Dakota to conduct an interview. To say I was excited is an understatement. I remember walking into Studio One for the first time and her then office manager noticing I was hyperventilating. “Take deep breaths,” I remember him saying. It was hard, but Yoko couldn’t have been sweeter which helped me relax a bit. I also remember being so nervous that the tape recorder wasn’t working that I kept banging my soda glass on the table to make sure the meters were moving (our voices were too soft to register for some reason). Luckily, the tape came out perfectly and it is two plus hours of audio that I will always cherish. What follows is what Yoko and I edited down for Issue No. 7 of YOKO ONLY. Even though Yoko could have focused her time on something for a major publication that would be read by millions, she spent hours going over our chat making sure every word was just right… So relax and throw your minds back to the Fall of 1984… the Yoko tribute LP (yes, it was still vinyl time), EVERYMAN HAS A WOMAN had just come out so that’s where the conversation began… Enjoy!

 

Chitra, also spelled as Citra, is an Indian genre of art that includes painting, sketch and any art form of delineation. The earliest mention of the term Chitra in the context of painting or picture is found in some of the ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism and Pali texts of Buddhism

 

NOMENCLATURE

Chitra (IAST: Citra, चित्र) is a Sanskrit word that appears in the Vedic texts such as hymns 1.71.1 and 6.65.2 of the Rigveda. There, and other texts such as Vajasaneyi Samhita, Taittiriya Samhita, Satapatha Brahmana and Tandya Brahmana, Chitra means "excellent, clear, bright, colored, anything brightly colored that strikes the eye, brilliantly ornamented, extraordinary that evokes wonder". In the Mahabharata and the Harivamsa, it means "picture, sktech, dilineation", and is presented as a genre of kala (arts). Many texts generally dated to the post-4th-century BCE period, use the term Chitra in the sense of painting, and Chitrakara as a painter. For example, the Sanskrit grammarian Panini in verse 3.2.21 of his Astadhyayi highlights the word chitrakara in this sense. Halls and public spaces to display paintings are called chitrasalas, and the earliest known mention of these are found in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

 

A few Indian regional texts such as Kasyapa silpa refer to painting by others words. For example, abhasa – which literally means "semblance, shining forth", is used in Kasyapa-shilpa to mean as a broader category of painting, of which chitra is one of three types. The verses in section 4.4 of the Kasyapa-silpa state that there are three types of images – those which are immovable (walls, floor, terracota, stucco), movable, and those which are both movable-immovable (stone, wood, gems).[5] In each of these three, states Kasyapa-shipa, are three classes of expression – ardhacitra, citra, and citra-abhasa. Ardhacitra is an art form where a high relief is combined with painting and parts of the body is not seen (it appears to be emerging out of the canvas). The Citra is the form of picture artwork where the whole is represented with or without integrating a relief. Citrabhasha is the form where an image is represented on a canvas or wall with colors (painting). However, states Commaraswamy, the word Abhasa has other meanings depending on the context. For example, in Hindu texts on philosophy, it implies the "field of objective experience" in the sense of the intellectual image internalized by a person during a reading of a subject (such as an epic, tale or fiction), or one during a meditative spiritual experience.

 

In some Buddhist and Hindu texts on methods to prepare a manuscript (palm leaf) or a composition on a cloth, the terms lekhya and alekhya are also used in the context of a chitra. More specifically, alekhya is the space left while writing a manuscript leaf or cloth, where the artist aims to add a picture or painting to illustrate the text.

 

HISTORY

The earliest explicit reference to painting in an Indian text is found in verse 4.2 of the Maitri Upanishad where it uses the phrase citrabhittir or "like a painted wall". The Indian art of painting is also mention in a number of Buddhist Pali suttas, but with the modified spelling of Citta. This term is found in the context of either a painting, or painter, or painted-hall (citta-gara) in Majjhima Nikaya 1.127, Samyutta Nikaya 2.101 and 3.152, Vinaya 4.289 and others. Among the Jain texts, it is mentioned in Book 2 of the Acaranga Sutra as it explains that Jaina monk should not indulge in the pleasures of watching a painting.

 

The Kamasutra, broadly accepted to have been complete by about the 4th-century CE, recommends that the young man should surprise the girl he courts with gifts of color boxes and painted scrolls. The Viddhasalabhanjika – another Hindu kama- and kavya–text uses chitra-simile in verse 1.16, as "pictures painted by the god of love, with the brush of the mind and the canvas of the heart".

 

The nature of a chitra (painting), how the viewer's mind projects a two dimensional artwork into a three dimensional representation, is used by Asanga in Mahayana Sutralamkara – a 3rd to 5th-century Sanskrit text of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, to explain "non-existent imagination" as follows:

 

Just as in a picture painted according to rules, there are neither projections nor depressions and yet we see it in three dimensions, so in the non-existent imagination there is no phenomenal differentiation, and yet we behold it.

— Mahayana Sutralamkara 13.7, Translated in French by Sylvain Levi

 

According to Yoko Taniguchi and Michiyo Mori, the art of painting the caves at the c. 6th-century Buddhas of Bamiyan site in Afghanistan, destroyed by the Taliban Muslims in the late 1990s, were likely introduced to this region from India along with the literature on early Buddhism.

 

TEXTS

There are many important dedicated Indian treatises on chitra. Some of these are chapters within a larger encyclopedia-like text. These include:

 

Chitrasutras, chapters 35–43 within the Hindu text Vishnudharmottara Purana (the standard, and oft referred to text in the Indian tradition)

Chitralaksana of Nagnajit (a classic on classical painting, 5th-century CE or earlier making it the oldest known text on Indian painting; but the Sanskrit version has been lost, only version available is in Tibet and it states that it is a translation of a Sanskrit text)

Samarangana Sutradhara (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Aparajitaprccha (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Manasollasa (an encyclopedia, contains chapters on paintings)

Abhilashitartha chinatamani

Sivatatva ratnakara

Chitra Kaladruma

Silpa ratna

Narada silpa

Sarasvati silpa

Prajapati silpa

Kasyapa silpa

 

These and other texts on chitra not only discuss the theory and practice of painting, some of them include discussions on how to become a painter, the diversity and the impact of a chitra on viewers, of aesthetics, how the art of painting relates to other arts (kala), methods of preparing the canvas or wall, methods and recipes to make color pigments. For example, the 10th-century Chitra Kaladruma presents recipe for making red color paint from the resin of lac insects. Other colors for the historic frescoes found in India, such as those in the Ajanta Caves, were obtained from nature. They mention earthy and mineral (inorganic) colorants such as yellow and red ochre, orpigment, green celadonite and ultramarine blue (lapis lazuli). The use of organic colorants prepared per a recipe in these texts have been confirmed through residue analysis and modern chromatographic techniques.

 

THEORY

The Indian concepts of painting are described in a range of texts called the shilpa shastras. These typically begin by attributing this art to divine sources such as Vishvakarma and ancient rishis (sages) such as Narayana and Nagnajit, weaving some mythology, highlighting chitra as a means to express ideas and beauty along with other universal aspects, then proceed to discuss the theory and practice of painting, sketching and other related arts. Manuscripts of many these texts are found in India, while some are known to be lost but are found outside India such as in Tibet and Nepal. Among these are the Citrasutras in the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana manuscripts discovered in India, and the Citralaksana manuscript discovered in Tibet (lost in India). This theory include early Indian ideas on how to prepare a canvas or substrate, measurement, proportion, stance, color, shade, projection, the painting's interaction with light, the viewer, how to captivate the mind, and other ideas.

 

According to the historic Indian tradition, a successful and impactful painting and painter requires a knowledge of the subject – either mythology or real life, as well as a keen sense of observation and knowledge of nature, human behavior, dance, music, song and other arts. For example, section 3.2 of Visnudharmottara Purana discusses these requirements and the contextual knowledge needed in chitra and the artist who produces it. The Chitrasutras in the Vishnudharmottara Purana state that the sculpture and painting arts are related, with the phrase "as in Natya, so in Citra". This relationship links them in rasa (aesthetics) and as forms of expression.

 

THE PAINTING

A chitra is a form of expression and communication. According to Aparajitaprccha – a 12th-century text on arts and architecture, just like the water reflects the moon, a chitra reflects the world. It is a rupa (form) of how the painter sees or what the painter wants the viewer to observe or feel or experience.

 

A good painting is one that is alive, breathing, draws in and affects the viewer. It captivates the minds of viewers, despite their diversity. Installed in a sala (hall or room), it enlivens the space.

 

The ornaments of a painting are its lines, shading, decoration and colors, states the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana. It states that there are eight gunas (merits, features) of a chitra that the artist must focus on: posture; proportion; the use of the plumb line; charm; detail (how much and where); verisimilitude; kshaya (loss, foreshortening) and; vrddhi (gain). Among the dosas (demerits, faults) of a painting and related arts, states Chitrasutra, are lines that are weak or thick, absence of variety, errors in scale (oversized eyes, lips, cheeks), inconsistency across the canvas, deviations from the rules of proportion, improper posture or sentiment, and non-merging of colors.

 

LIMBS OF THE PAINTING

Two historical sets called "chitra anga", or "limbs of painting" are found in Indian texts. According to the Samarangana Sutradhara – an 11th-century Sanskrit text on Hindu architecture and arts, a painting has eight limbs:

 

Vartika – manufacture of brushes

Bhumibandhana – preparation of base, plaster, canvas

Rekhakarma – sketching

Varnakarma – coloring

Vartanakarma – shading

lekhakarana – outlining

Dvikakarma – second and final lining

Lepyakarma – final coating

 

According to Yashodhara's Jayamangala, a Sanskrit commentary on Kamasutra, there are sadanga (six limbs)[note 5] in the art of alekhyam and chitra (drawing and painting):

 

Rupa-bhedah, or form distinction; this requires a knowledge of characteristic marks, diversity, manifested forms that distinguish states of something in the same genus/class

Pramanani, or measure; requires knowledge of measurement and proportion rules (talamana)

Bhava yojanam, or emotion and its joining with other parts of the painting; requires understanding and representing the mood of the subject

Lavanya yojanam, or rasa, charm; requires understanding and representing the inner qualities of the subject

Sadrsyam, or resemblance; requires knowledge of visual correspondence across the canvas

Varnika-bhanga or color-pigment-analysis; requires knowledge how colors distribute on the canvas and how they visually impact the viewer.

 

These six limbs are arranged stylistically in two ways. First as a set of compound (Rupa-bhedah and Varnika-bhanda), a set of joining (middle two yojnam), and a set of single words (Pramanani and Sadrsyam). Second, states Victor Mair, the six limbs in this Hindu text are paired in a set of differentiation skills (first two), then a pair of aesthetic skills, and finally a pair of technical skills. These limbs parallel the 12th-century Six principles of Chinese painting of Xie He. {refn|group=note|The Hua Chi of Teng Ch'un, a 12th-century Chinese text, mentions the Buddhist temple of Nalanda with frescoes about the Buddha painted inside. It states that the Indian Buddhas look different from those painted by Chinese, as the Indian paintings have Buddha with larger eyes, their ears are curiously stretched and the Buddhas have their right shoulder bare. It then states that the artists first make a drawing of the picture, then paint a vermilion or gold colored base. It also mentions the use of ox-glue and a gum produced from peach trees and willow juice, with the artists preferring the latter. According to Coomaraswamy, the ox-glue in the Indian context mentioned in the Chinese text is probably the same as the recipe found in the Sanskrit text Silparatna, one where the base medium is produced from boiling buffalo skin in milk, followed by drying and blending process.

 

The six limbs in Jayamangala likely reflect the earliest and more established Hindu tradition for chitra. This is supported by the Chitrasutras found in the Vishnudharmottara Purana. They explicitly mention pramanani and lavanya as key elements of a painting, as well as discuss the other four of the six limbs in other sutras. The Chitrasutra chapters are likely from about the 4th or 5th-century. Numerous other Indian texts touch upon the elements or aspects of a chitra. For example, the Aparajitaprccha states that the essential elements of a painting are: citrabhumi (background), the rekha (lines, sketch), the varna (color), the vartana (shading), the bhusana (decoration) and the rasa (aesthetic experience).

 

THE PAINTER

The painter (chitrakara, rupakara) must master the fundamentals of measurement and proportions, state the historic chitra texts of India. According to these historic texts, the expert painter masters the skills in measurement, characteristics of subjects, attributes, form, relative proportion, ornament and beauty, states Isabella Nardi – a scholar known for her studies on chitra text and traditions of India. According to the Chitrasutras, a skilled painter needs practice, and is one who is able to paint neck, hands, feet, ears of living beings without ornamentation, as well as paint water waves, flames, smoke, and garments as they get affected by the speed of wind. He paints all types of scenes, ranging from dharma, artha and kama. A painter observes, then remembers, repeating this process till his memory has all the details he needs to paint, states Silparatna. According to Sivatattva Ratnakara, he is well versed in sketching, astute with measurements, skilled in outlining (hastalekha), competent with colors, and ready to diligently mix and combine colors to create his chitra. The painter is a creative person, with an inner sense of rasa (aesthetics).

 

THE VIEWER

The painter should consider the diversity of viewers, states the Indian tradition of chitra. The experts and critics with much experience with paintings study the lines, shading and aesthetics, the uninitiated visitors and children enjoy the vibrancy of colors, while women tend to be attracted to the ornamentation of form and the emotions. A successful painter tends to captivate a variety of minds. A painter should remember that the visual and aesthetic impact of a painting triggers different responses in different audiences.

 

The Silparatna – a Sanskrit text on the arts, states that the painting should reflect its intended place and purpose. A theme suitable for a palace or gateway is different from that in a temple or the walls of a home. Scenes of wars, misery, death and suffering are not suitable paintings within homes, but these can be important in a chitrasala (museum with paintings). Auspicious paintings with beautiful colors such as those that cheer and enliven a room are better for homes, states Silparatna.

 

PRACITICE

According to the art historian Percy Brown, the painting tradition in India is ancient and the persuasive evidence are the oldest known murals at the Jogimara caves. The mention of chitra and related terms in the pre-Buddhist Vedic era texts, the chitra tradition is much older. It is very likely, states Brown, the pre-Buddhist structures had paintings in them. However, the primary building material in ancient India was wood, the colors were organic materials and natural pigments, which when combined with the tropical weather in India would naturally cause the painting to fade, damage and degrade over the centuries. It is not surprising, therefore, that sample paintings and historic evidence for chitra practice are unusual. The few notable surviving examples of chitra are found hidden in caves, where they would be naturally preserved a bit better, longer and would be somewhat protected from the destructive effects of wind, dust, water and biological processes.

Some notable, major surviving examples of historic paintings include:

 

Murals at Jogimara cave (eight panels of murals, with a Brahmi inscription, 2nd or 1st century BCE, Hindu), oldest known ceiling paintings in India in remote Ramgarh hills of northern Chhattisgarh, below on wall of this cave is a Brahmi inscription in Magadhi language about a girl named Devadasi and a boy named Devadina (either they were lovers and wrote a love-graffiti per one translation, or they were partners who together converted natural caves here into a theatre with painted walls per another translation)

 

Mural at Sitabhinji Group of Rock Shelters (c. 400 CE Ravanachhaya mural with an inscription, near a Shiva temple in remote Odisha, a non-religious painting), the oldest surviving example of a tempera painting in eastern states of India

 

Murals at Ajanta caves (Jataka tales, Buddhist), 5th-century CE, Maharashtra

Murals at Badami Cave Temples (Hindu), 6th-century CE, Karnataka (secular paintings along with one of the earliest known painting of a Hindu legend about Shiva and Parvati inside a Vaishnava cave)

Murals at Bagh caves (Hallisalasya dance, Buddhist or Hindu), Madhya Pradesh

Murals at Ellora caves (Flying vidyadharas, Jain), Maharashtra

Frescoes at Sittanavasal cave (Nature scenes likely representing places of Tirthankara sermons, Jain), Tamil Nadu

Frescoes at Thirunadhikkara cave temple (Flowers and a woman, likely a scene of puja offering to Ganesha, another of Vishnu, Hindu), Travancore region, Kerala-Tamil Nadu

Paintings at the Brihadisvara temple (Dancer, Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Manuscript paintings (numerous states such as Gujarat, Kashmir, Kerala, Odisha, Assam; also Nepal, Tibet; Buddhist, Jain, Hindu

Vijayanagara temples (Hindu), Karnataka

Chidambaram temple (Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Chitrachavadi (Hindu, a choultry–mandapa near Madurai with Ramayana frescoes)

Pahari paintings (Hindu), Himachal Pradesh and nearby regions

Rajput paintings (Hindu), Rajasthan

Deccan paintings (Hindu, Jain)

Kerala paintings (Hindu)

Telangana paintings (Hindu)

Mughal paintings (Indo-Islamic)

 

CONTEMPORARY CULTURE

Kalamkari (Hindu)

Pattas (Jain, Hindu)

 

WIKIPEDIA

The second day of the CitizenU workshop during Youth Politik. Although I was a bit late, I thankfully didn't miss anything major in the beginning, so here is my summary of everything I did see. I summarized a 7 hour session into a 15-20 minute read, so enjoy! :x

 

At the part I arrived in we were learning about the stair-case structure that showed how

discrimination is created through stereotypes and prejudice. Discrimination and stereotypes are also created through positions of power such as males being more dominate over females even though females make up 52% of the population for example.

 

The dominate culture in a location defines the stereotype and discrimination that is seen and accepted. So in India for example instead of white people being dominate, racism would be directed to them in certain cases. There is also a power system that defines how some people may act towards others in a lower class, not acknowledging the power system causes problems in some cases. Although we are trying to become less discriminatory and racist we always have to be conscious about how we act towards other people, otherwise we will regress back to how we were in regards to discrimination.

 

We normalize discriminatory language like "that's so gay", "fag", or "retard" to name a few that are in common use. These are used in a joking manor by many who fail to see that they are hurtful words..

 

There was an experiment done in Vancouver, two resumes that were the exact same apart from one having a white sounding name and the other having an asian/foreign name, were handed out to various businesses to see which one would get the most call backs. It was found that the white name got 40% more opportunities then the asian/foreign one. It was shown that the way your name sounds defines the prejudice that you would receive even before you meet someone!

 

Check-out a book by Peggy Macintosh called Unpacking White Privilege for other details on this.

 

After lunch was the first workshop of the afternoon. I choose to go to the Anti-Racism workshop.

 

First think of what racism is to you. There are different types of racism such as systemic (in the government, etc) , ethno-violence (violence between different ethnicities), social oppression (when one ethnicity oppresses another when they have a position of power), internalized racism (within the same ethnicity), and ethnocentrism (where one ethnicity believes it is the best). Reverse racism is when the minority race (in power or representation) makes fun of the dominate race.

 

Racism has no genetic base, so genetics do not define someone is or isn't good at. There are no human subspecies as well since we weren't isolated from each other long enough to evolve differently.

 

Canada has a long history with racism against native people and immigrants since its creation. Such as residential schools for native people, the Komagata Maru incident which turned back 376 Indians, the Chinese Head Tax which was made to try and stop Chinese immigration to Canada, and the Japanese Internment Camps that were made to hold people of Japanese decent while World War 2 was going on. Vancouver itself has traditionally been a very racist city, with it being a port city, it was where many immigrants passed through on their way into Canada. So much diversity in a single location is bound to cause problems overtime.

 

One of the current issues is that immigrants that were doctors, engineers,or CEO's with very good foreign credentials and education are unable to get jobs here in the supposed "land of opportunities". People, who if given the chance, could give a lot to the economy here and yet they end up driving cabs or working as janitors.

 

Discrimination happens everywhere and to everyone. There are many stories we don't hear or even try to look for.

 

Do you think that racism is okay if it is used in comedy? Is it okay if you do it against your own race?

 

There is a limit to anti-discrimination though. When death threats are made and violence is threatened against someone for what comments they made, you cannot even consider it to be anything else but another form of extreme discrimination.

 

For some people there is a legitimate reason as to why they are racist to a certain group (such as being severely bullied) but even then...

 

You can always do something even if you are only a witness to discrimination, be it speaking to the victim, speaking to the offender, or speaking to other witnesses to try and alleviate or stop the discrimination from happening again. It's always good to say something but make sure you stay safe as well, so you don't necessarily need to confront the offender.

 

Discrimination occurs when one side is dominate.

 

Homophobia Workshop:

 

What is homophobia? It is considered to be a fear of gay people but it's a really broad topic that encompasses much more.

 

LGBTQ2S is an acronym that encompasses what the entire homosexual community is:

• L stands for lesbian. Women that love other women

• G stands for gay. Men that love other men

• B stands for bisexual. One person who likes both genders equally

• T stands for transgender/transsexual. Transgender is an umbrella term that refers to people's gender identity. Transsexual refers to people who want or need a gender change because they don't feel right in the body they were born with.

• Q stands for queer. Queer is an overarching umbrella term that encompasses the acronym but is normally used in a negative way.

• 2S stands for Two-spirited, which is a term normally used by indigenous people. It is used to describe people who do activities that are done by both sides or people who wear the clothes of the opposite gender. It is used in a revered and respected manner. It's best to check up on this term on your own, since I missed a few key meanings as I was taking my notes :s

 

In some countries, were being a homosexual is illegal, people have managed to survive through sex change surgeries (going from male to female or female to male) since they would technically be considered straight if they were the opposite sex.

 

Homophobia stems from strong religious belief, no contact with queers, and fear of rejection from peers to name a few causes.

 

Homophobia stereotypes such as:

• it is considered a mental illness

• homosexuals are mostly in the arts, are nurses, or body builders

• they are emotionally unstable and unreliable

• homosexual men are effeminate & lesbians are "mannish"

• they are promiscuous

• one stereotype that I have not heard of is that homosexual males pray on young children. The Surrey school board once banned children's books because they believed it may cause the children to become like that in the future. Gay teachers weren't even allowed to teach at this time.

 

10% of the population is gay, so this situation presents a perfect opportunity for discrimination to occur since a large portion of the population is not educated about it.

 

Empathy plays a large part in fighting homophobia (and any other type of discrimination) since people who are able to put themselves in the shoes of those being discriminated against, get a far better understanding of what the victim of homophobia is going through.

 

In a situation of discrimination there are three parts to it; The witness, the offender, and the victim. The witness is the one who just watches and does nothing since they believe it's none of their business, the offender is the one who creates the situation, and everyone should know what a victim is and what it's like to be a victim.

 

The media plays another large part in what normal people believe about homosexual people.

 

One thing to remember, is that homosexual people are not aliens, they aren't THAT different from each and everyone of us "normal" people, so they deserve to be treated just like any other person and have the same rights.

 

After that, we had the final closing remarks and game to end the session with.

 

Of course I am missing things since this is just a summary of everything that happened in today's workshops, so get informed and do your own research as well!

 

The CitizenU program should be launching soon in various communities in Vancouver, so keep an eye out for it and try to sign-up if it's in your area! :D

 

Other mentions of the CitizenU program in my photo project:

Day 126: www.flickr.com/photos/sukhrajb/5694878315/in/set-72157625...

Day 83: www.flickr.com/photos/sukhrajb/5558059088/in/set-72157625...

Day 59: www.flickr.com/photos/sukhrajb/5488366552/in/set-72157625...

Chitra, also spelled as Citra, is an Indian genre of art that includes painting, sketch and any art form of delineation. The earliest mention of the term Chitra in the context of painting or picture is found in some of the ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism and Pali texts of Buddhism

 

NOMENCLATURE

Chitra (IAST: Citra, चित्र) is a Sanskrit word that appears in the Vedic texts such as hymns 1.71.1 and 6.65.2 of the Rigveda. There, and other texts such as Vajasaneyi Samhita, Taittiriya Samhita, Satapatha Brahmana and Tandya Brahmana, Chitra means "excellent, clear, bright, colored, anything brightly colored that strikes the eye, brilliantly ornamented, extraordinary that evokes wonder". In the Mahabharata and the Harivamsa, it means "picture, sktech, dilineation", and is presented as a genre of kala (arts). Many texts generally dated to the post-4th-century BCE period, use the term Chitra in the sense of painting, and Chitrakara as a painter. For example, the Sanskrit grammarian Panini in verse 3.2.21 of his Astadhyayi highlights the word chitrakara in this sense. Halls and public spaces to display paintings are called chitrasalas, and the earliest known mention of these are found in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

 

A few Indian regional texts such as Kasyapa silpa refer to painting by others words. For example, abhasa – which literally means "semblance, shining forth", is used in Kasyapa-shilpa to mean as a broader category of painting, of which chitra is one of three types. The verses in section 4.4 of the Kasyapa-silpa state that there are three types of images – those which are immovable (walls, floor, terracota, stucco), movable, and those which are both movable-immovable (stone, wood, gems).[5] In each of these three, states Kasyapa-shipa, are three classes of expression – ardhacitra, citra, and citra-abhasa. Ardhacitra is an art form where a high relief is combined with painting and parts of the body is not seen (it appears to be emerging out of the canvas). The Citra is the form of picture artwork where the whole is represented with or without integrating a relief. Citrabhasha is the form where an image is represented on a canvas or wall with colors (painting). However, states Commaraswamy, the word Abhasa has other meanings depending on the context. For example, in Hindu texts on philosophy, it implies the "field of objective experience" in the sense of the intellectual image internalized by a person during a reading of a subject (such as an epic, tale or fiction), or one during a meditative spiritual experience.

 

In some Buddhist and Hindu texts on methods to prepare a manuscript (palm leaf) or a composition on a cloth, the terms lekhya and alekhya are also used in the context of a chitra. More specifically, alekhya is the space left while writing a manuscript leaf or cloth, where the artist aims to add a picture or painting to illustrate the text.

 

HISTORY

The earliest explicit reference to painting in an Indian text is found in verse 4.2 of the Maitri Upanishad where it uses the phrase citrabhittir or "like a painted wall". The Indian art of painting is also mention in a number of Buddhist Pali suttas, but with the modified spelling of Citta. This term is found in the context of either a painting, or painter, or painted-hall (citta-gara) in Majjhima Nikaya 1.127, Samyutta Nikaya 2.101 and 3.152, Vinaya 4.289 and others. Among the Jain texts, it is mentioned in Book 2 of the Acaranga Sutra as it explains that Jaina monk should not indulge in the pleasures of watching a painting.

 

The Kamasutra, broadly accepted to have been complete by about the 4th-century CE, recommends that the young man should surprise the girl he courts with gifts of color boxes and painted scrolls. The Viddhasalabhanjika – another Hindu kama- and kavya–text uses chitra-simile in verse 1.16, as "pictures painted by the god of love, with the brush of the mind and the canvas of the heart".

 

The nature of a chitra (painting), how the viewer's mind projects a two dimensional artwork into a three dimensional representation, is used by Asanga in Mahayana Sutralamkara – a 3rd to 5th-century Sanskrit text of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, to explain "non-existent imagination" as follows:

 

Just as in a picture painted according to rules, there are neither projections nor depressions and yet we see it in three dimensions, so in the non-existent imagination there is no phenomenal differentiation, and yet we behold it.

— Mahayana Sutralamkara 13.7, Translated in French by Sylvain Levi

 

According to Yoko Taniguchi and Michiyo Mori, the art of painting the caves at the c. 6th-century Buddhas of Bamiyan site in Afghanistan, destroyed by the Taliban Muslims in the late 1990s, were likely introduced to this region from India along with the literature on early Buddhism.

 

TEXTS

There are many important dedicated Indian treatises on chitra. Some of these are chapters within a larger encyclopedia-like text. These include:

 

Chitrasutras, chapters 35–43 within the Hindu text Vishnudharmottara Purana (the standard, and oft referred to text in the Indian tradition)

Chitralaksana of Nagnajit (a classic on classical painting, 5th-century CE or earlier making it the oldest known text on Indian painting; but the Sanskrit version has been lost, only version available is in Tibet and it states that it is a translation of a Sanskrit text)

Samarangana Sutradhara (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Aparajitaprccha (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Manasollasa (an encyclopedia, contains chapters on paintings)

Abhilashitartha chinatamani

Sivatatva ratnakara

Chitra Kaladruma

Silpa ratna

Narada silpa

Sarasvati silpa

Prajapati silpa

Kasyapa silpa

 

These and other texts on chitra not only discuss the theory and practice of painting, some of them include discussions on how to become a painter, the diversity and the impact of a chitra on viewers, of aesthetics, how the art of painting relates to other arts (kala), methods of preparing the canvas or wall, methods and recipes to make color pigments. For example, the 10th-century Chitra Kaladruma presents recipe for making red color paint from the resin of lac insects. Other colors for the historic frescoes found in India, such as those in the Ajanta Caves, were obtained from nature. They mention earthy and mineral (inorganic) colorants such as yellow and red ochre, orpigment, green celadonite and ultramarine blue (lapis lazuli). The use of organic colorants prepared per a recipe in these texts have been confirmed through residue analysis and modern chromatographic techniques.

 

THEORY

The Indian concepts of painting are described in a range of texts called the shilpa shastras. These typically begin by attributing this art to divine sources such as Vishvakarma and ancient rishis (sages) such as Narayana and Nagnajit, weaving some mythology, highlighting chitra as a means to express ideas and beauty along with other universal aspects, then proceed to discuss the theory and practice of painting, sketching and other related arts. Manuscripts of many these texts are found in India, while some are known to be lost but are found outside India such as in Tibet and Nepal. Among these are the Citrasutras in the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana manuscripts discovered in India, and the Citralaksana manuscript discovered in Tibet (lost in India). This theory include early Indian ideas on how to prepare a canvas or substrate, measurement, proportion, stance, color, shade, projection, the painting's interaction with light, the viewer, how to captivate the mind, and other ideas.

 

According to the historic Indian tradition, a successful and impactful painting and painter requires a knowledge of the subject – either mythology or real life, as well as a keen sense of observation and knowledge of nature, human behavior, dance, music, song and other arts. For example, section 3.2 of Visnudharmottara Purana discusses these requirements and the contextual knowledge needed in chitra and the artist who produces it. The Chitrasutras in the Vishnudharmottara Purana state that the sculpture and painting arts are related, with the phrase "as in Natya, so in Citra". This relationship links them in rasa (aesthetics) and as forms of expression.

 

THE PAINTING

A chitra is a form of expression and communication. According to Aparajitaprccha – a 12th-century text on arts and architecture, just like the water reflects the moon, a chitra reflects the world. It is a rupa (form) of how the painter sees or what the painter wants the viewer to observe or feel or experience.

 

A good painting is one that is alive, breathing, draws in and affects the viewer. It captivates the minds of viewers, despite their diversity. Installed in a sala (hall or room), it enlivens the space.

 

The ornaments of a painting are its lines, shading, decoration and colors, states the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana. It states that there are eight gunas (merits, features) of a chitra that the artist must focus on: posture; proportion; the use of the plumb line; charm; detail (how much and where); verisimilitude; kshaya (loss, foreshortening) and; vrddhi (gain). Among the dosas (demerits, faults) of a painting and related arts, states Chitrasutra, are lines that are weak or thick, absence of variety, errors in scale (oversized eyes, lips, cheeks), inconsistency across the canvas, deviations from the rules of proportion, improper posture or sentiment, and non-merging of colors.

 

LIMBS OF THE PAINTING

Two historical sets called "chitra anga", or "limbs of painting" are found in Indian texts. According to the Samarangana Sutradhara – an 11th-century Sanskrit text on Hindu architecture and arts, a painting has eight limbs:

 

Vartika – manufacture of brushes

Bhumibandhana – preparation of base, plaster, canvas

Rekhakarma – sketching

Varnakarma – coloring

Vartanakarma – shading

lekhakarana – outlining

Dvikakarma – second and final lining

Lepyakarma – final coating

 

According to Yashodhara's Jayamangala, a Sanskrit commentary on Kamasutra, there are sadanga (six limbs)[note 5] in the art of alekhyam and chitra (drawing and painting):

 

Rupa-bhedah, or form distinction; this requires a knowledge of characteristic marks, diversity, manifested forms that distinguish states of something in the same genus/class

Pramanani, or measure; requires knowledge of measurement and proportion rules (talamana)

Bhava yojanam, or emotion and its joining with other parts of the painting; requires understanding and representing the mood of the subject

Lavanya yojanam, or rasa, charm; requires understanding and representing the inner qualities of the subject

Sadrsyam, or resemblance; requires knowledge of visual correspondence across the canvas

Varnika-bhanga or color-pigment-analysis; requires knowledge how colors distribute on the canvas and how they visually impact the viewer.

 

These six limbs are arranged stylistically in two ways. First as a set of compound (Rupa-bhedah and Varnika-bhanda), a set of joining (middle two yojnam), and a set of single words (Pramanani and Sadrsyam). Second, states Victor Mair, the six limbs in this Hindu text are paired in a set of differentiation skills (first two), then a pair of aesthetic skills, and finally a pair of technical skills. These limbs parallel the 12th-century Six principles of Chinese painting of Xie He. {refn|group=note|The Hua Chi of Teng Ch'un, a 12th-century Chinese text, mentions the Buddhist temple of Nalanda with frescoes about the Buddha painted inside. It states that the Indian Buddhas look different from those painted by Chinese, as the Indian paintings have Buddha with larger eyes, their ears are curiously stretched and the Buddhas have their right shoulder bare. It then states that the artists first make a drawing of the picture, then paint a vermilion or gold colored base. It also mentions the use of ox-glue and a gum produced from peach trees and willow juice, with the artists preferring the latter. According to Coomaraswamy, the ox-glue in the Indian context mentioned in the Chinese text is probably the same as the recipe found in the Sanskrit text Silparatna, one where the base medium is produced from boiling buffalo skin in milk, followed by drying and blending process.

 

The six limbs in Jayamangala likely reflect the earliest and more established Hindu tradition for chitra. This is supported by the Chitrasutras found in the Vishnudharmottara Purana. They explicitly mention pramanani and lavanya as key elements of a painting, as well as discuss the other four of the six limbs in other sutras. The Chitrasutra chapters are likely from about the 4th or 5th-century. Numerous other Indian texts touch upon the elements or aspects of a chitra. For example, the Aparajitaprccha states that the essential elements of a painting are: citrabhumi (background), the rekha (lines, sketch), the varna (color), the vartana (shading), the bhusana (decoration) and the rasa (aesthetic experience).

 

THE PAINTER

The painter (chitrakara, rupakara) must master the fundamentals of measurement and proportions, state the historic chitra texts of India. According to these historic texts, the expert painter masters the skills in measurement, characteristics of subjects, attributes, form, relative proportion, ornament and beauty, states Isabella Nardi – a scholar known for her studies on chitra text and traditions of India. According to the Chitrasutras, a skilled painter needs practice, and is one who is able to paint neck, hands, feet, ears of living beings without ornamentation, as well as paint water waves, flames, smoke, and garments as they get affected by the speed of wind. He paints all types of scenes, ranging from dharma, artha and kama. A painter observes, then remembers, repeating this process till his memory has all the details he needs to paint, states Silparatna. According to Sivatattva Ratnakara, he is well versed in sketching, astute with measurements, skilled in outlining (hastalekha), competent with colors, and ready to diligently mix and combine colors to create his chitra. The painter is a creative person, with an inner sense of rasa (aesthetics).

 

THE VIEWER

The painter should consider the diversity of viewers, states the Indian tradition of chitra. The experts and critics with much experience with paintings study the lines, shading and aesthetics, the uninitiated visitors and children enjoy the vibrancy of colors, while women tend to be attracted to the ornamentation of form and the emotions. A successful painter tends to captivate a variety of minds. A painter should remember that the visual and aesthetic impact of a painting triggers different responses in different audiences.

 

The Silparatna – a Sanskrit text on the arts, states that the painting should reflect its intended place and purpose. A theme suitable for a palace or gateway is different from that in a temple or the walls of a home. Scenes of wars, misery, death and suffering are not suitable paintings within homes, but these can be important in a chitrasala (museum with paintings). Auspicious paintings with beautiful colors such as those that cheer and enliven a room are better for homes, states Silparatna.

 

PRACITICE

According to the art historian Percy Brown, the painting tradition in India is ancient and the persuasive evidence are the oldest known murals at the Jogimara caves. The mention of chitra and related terms in the pre-Buddhist Vedic era texts, the chitra tradition is much older. It is very likely, states Brown, the pre-Buddhist structures had paintings in them. However, the primary building material in ancient India was wood, the colors were organic materials and natural pigments, which when combined with the tropical weather in India would naturally cause the painting to fade, damage and degrade over the centuries. It is not surprising, therefore, that sample paintings and historic evidence for chitra practice are unusual. The few notable surviving examples of chitra are found hidden in caves, where they would be naturally preserved a bit better, longer and would be somewhat protected from the destructive effects of wind, dust, water and biological processes.

Some notable, major surviving examples of historic paintings include:

 

Murals at Jogimara cave (eight panels of murals, with a Brahmi inscription, 2nd or 1st century BCE, Hindu), oldest known ceiling paintings in India in remote Ramgarh hills of northern Chhattisgarh, below on wall of this cave is a Brahmi inscription in Magadhi language about a girl named Devadasi and a boy named Devadina (either they were lovers and wrote a love-graffiti per one translation, or they were partners who together converted natural caves here into a theatre with painted walls per another translation)

 

Mural at Sitabhinji Group of Rock Shelters (c. 400 CE Ravanachhaya mural with an inscription, near a Shiva temple in remote Odisha, a non-religious painting), the oldest surviving example of a tempera painting in eastern states of India

 

Murals at Ajanta caves (Jataka tales, Buddhist), 5th-century CE, Maharashtra

Murals at Badami Cave Temples (Hindu), 6th-century CE, Karnataka (secular paintings along with one of the earliest known painting of a Hindu legend about Shiva and Parvati inside a Vaishnava cave)

Murals at Bagh caves (Hallisalasya dance, Buddhist or Hindu), Madhya Pradesh

Murals at Ellora caves (Flying vidyadharas, Jain), Maharashtra

Frescoes at Sittanavasal cave (Nature scenes likely representing places of Tirthankara sermons, Jain), Tamil Nadu

Frescoes at Thirunadhikkara cave temple (Flowers and a woman, likely a scene of puja offering to Ganesha, another of Vishnu, Hindu), Travancore region, Kerala-Tamil Nadu

Paintings at the Brihadisvara temple (Dancer, Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Manuscript paintings (numerous states such as Gujarat, Kashmir, Kerala, Odisha, Assam; also Nepal, Tibet; Buddhist, Jain, Hindu

Vijayanagara temples (Hindu), Karnataka

Chidambaram temple (Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Chitrachavadi (Hindu, a choultry–mandapa near Madurai with Ramayana frescoes)

Pahari paintings (Hindu), Himachal Pradesh and nearby regions

Rajput paintings (Hindu), Rajasthan

Deccan paintings (Hindu, Jain)

Kerala paintings (Hindu)

Telangana paintings (Hindu)

Mughal paintings (Indo-Islamic)

 

CONTEMPORARY CULTURE

Kalamkari (Hindu)

Pattas (Jain, Hindu)

 

WIKIPEDIA

I went back to my hometown to vote today. It's a tiny, republican, for-Trump town somewhere northwest of Houston that no one has heard of. I shot in a tiny skate park behind my junior high.

 

Today's PSA:

 

Voting is so important, especially this year. And let me tell you, today's ballot was the most 50-50 split ballot I've ever seen in my life. 50% women or non-white; 50% republican. It gives me chills (the bad kind). Will you vote for the woman or non-white person, or for the white republican?

 

I've not always been the most educated voter. I grew up middle-republican because my parents were—I didn't even think about it. I don't have a mind for politics, but this year I think might change that.

 

I've had my tussle with internalized racism and privilege. Not too long ago, I was falling into those old thought patterns that you see rampant now. But I accepted that and grew—and it definitely wasn't easy. It was crying on the floor at 12 am because I thought no one understood me, and it was humbling myself into self hatred and a long period of depression because I couldn't understand how I'd missed the point for so many years when I had thought I was doing the right thing, and I couldn't understand how others couldn't see how I was working on myself. Ultimately, it was a period of grief that reconciled into a passion for those who are underprivileged and who can't do the things that I can do every day—like innocently taking self portraits in a skate park across from a junior high in a conservative town. (I'm lucky I pass.)

 

Since then, I like to think that I've been working on myself, and checking myself. I've come a long way. I never intended to say hateful things or devalue anyone—ever. That's just not me. Everyone's important. Everyone. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE of you is important and deserve the chance to show it. Every single one of you has a talent somewhere.

 

Anyway, I voted today. If you are on the fence, please consider what just one vote could do. It could change my life, my girlfriend's life, my friends' lives, a stranger's life for the better. Why not do that? Why continue this hatred? Why can't we just be decent?

 

Please don't vote third party. Every vote for third party in this particular election is a vote for Trump, and another 4 years is just something we can't afford.

 

Me and other minorities have been straight up constantly terrified for 4 years. Let's put a stop to that.

 

PS: I was almost denied voting today because of my outdated ID. I'm getting my name/marker/photo changed on my ID tomorrow—I didn't want to jeopardize my vote today—but as a note to other transgender people out there, please take this into consideration. Remember to bring your name change documents if you have them, if you pass, and if your legal name doesn't match your ID. If you don't have your name changed yet, I would advise you to do so as soon as possible if you can (but after the election) because of the political climate; if not, come up with a way to confirm your identity at the polls. Whether that's reciting your address from memory (like I had to do) or bringing other identification documents or something else, ensure you have the ability to vote this year.

Emberen Twine pouts now. "Milk isn't gonna fix this," she growls to no one in particular. "There is a war coming and I am going to be collateral damage!" Her eyes pool with tears.

 

Naomah Beaumont quirks an ear at Emby. "A war? With who?"

 

Ashur Kentoku steps closer and pets Em, purring at her and making momma-cat sounds...

 

Emberen Twine: "With EVERYONE!" She turns and looks out over the city. "Don't you feel it? DOn't you feel how thinck the air is," she asks desperately as she turns back around. "People don't care about understanding! They don't care who gets hurt! They only care about hteir precious CONCRETE and...brick! and...metal! Like it could love them! Like it will comfort them when their brothers and sisters are dead!" She blinks and the tears flow, her breaths issuing more panicked as she begins to sob. She flumps to the floor.

 

Naomah Beaumont frowns a little and reaches down to pet Emby's ears, now that she can reach them. "Even I've felt that, hon. " Nio looks at Ash, her expression stricken. "Whatever happens, keep her safe, will you?

 

Ashur Kentoku nods, holding Em's shoulders, trying to soother her...she doesnt say anything, just purrs and merrs at Em.....

 

Emberen Twine tucks her head into her knees, shoulders shuddering in silent sobs as her fists ball tightly, her knuckles whitening. She is vibrating with the tension of the city. Like a conduit...it flows through her.

 

Naomah Beaumont: The city /is/ tense. It's like... the legion has been so quiet for so long that all the old animosities have started coming out of the woodwork again.

 

Ashur Kentoku stares at the little aquariums that form the soles of Em's boots, watching the tiny jewel-like fish and marine creatures swirling with the enclosed micro-system and thinks of Midian, its closed systems and its cycles of life and death. She leans in close to Em from behind and puts her arms around her, hugging her close.....

 

Naomah Beaumont: I don't know, I haven't been here long enough to see this city's mood swings yet.

 

] Ashur Kentoku: "I have," Ash whispers...."I have. And Em's right. There's a storm coming...."

 

Emberen Twine looks up as if Nio just rang a bell...."And you are all falling for it," she cries. "They don't have to pull the trigger. You are all going to blow your bloody selves up!" Her eyes search Nio's questioningly.

 

Naomah Beaumont slips an arm around Emby After a moment's thought, she hesitantly reaches a hand toward Ashur as well. "I know. Unless we're all... extremely clever, and extremely... I don't know. Empathetic... things are going to get rough."

 

Ashur Kentoku: "One takes shelter from a storm, one doesnt fight it. Unless one considers themself part of the storm..."

 

Naomah Beaumont: Aren't we, Ash? You and I both?"

 

Emberen Twine: "They already have,"s he says, her lip quivering as more tears tumble from her ashen eyes. A chill runs up her spine and she shudders. "Everyone in the city lost the battle long ago...when they fell prey to the term 'on the other hand' becasue it means they chose to doubt honesty when it was offered. And the honest...the honest will be the first to die from that mistake, leaving nothing but the bottom feeders to rebuild! No one listens to their instincts..." she heaves..."Too afraid to be wrong...too afraid PERIOD. ANd once you make a choice out of fear, your world will crash like dominoes. Nothing good comes from letting fear rule your world." She begins to mutter incoherantly and her sobs internalize, leaving just their shadows in the form of whimpers.

 

刘贤斌：《走出东方专制主义藩篱》英文翻译

 

Indicted for subversion for writing essays like these, Liu Xianbin awaits trial in a Suining, Sichuan jail cell. He may be tried as early as the end of August 2010. Here is an English translation of Liu Xianbin's article on the necessity of China achieving constitutional democracy.

--------------------------

TRANSLATION

 

Constitutional Democracy for China: Escaping Eastern Autocracy

  

by Liu Xianbin

 

Over the past several thousand years, China has been an autocratic country.This can be attributed to its deeply rooted autocratic culture and the and servile culture derived that grew out of it.

 

Like other cultures in the world, Chinese culture involved a pursuit of goodness and an aspiration for an ideal society and contained a basic universal value of mankind. Fore example, in the ancient times, the concept of the "whole world being one community" could be found in Chinese culture. The system that a king abdicates and hands over the crown to another person in the times of Emperors Yao, Shun, and Yu was a concrete practice of the concept of the "whole world being one community." To use a common expression, the "whole world being one community" means that the world belongs to the people under heaven. To use a modern term, it means the people are the master of the country. This is the most important thing in the core concept of democracy in modern politics. Later, two major schools of Chinese culture, Confucianism and Taoism, inherited the concept of the "whole world being one community." In their minds, the most ideal rulers were those who were able to implement the concept of the "whole world being one community." Mencius once said: "There is a way to win a kingdom: win the people, and the kingdom is your's. There is a way to win the people: win their hearts, and the people are won." What Mencius meant is that those who win the hearts of the people can win the kingdom and those who lose the support of the people can lose the kingdom. The idea can also be applied to modern democracy.

 

Moreover, Pre-Qin Confucian scholars also entertained many ideas which are in line with modern democracy. For example, in the Analects of Confucius, there is a story talking about "Fan Chi asking what constitutes wisdom." In the story, Confucius said: "We should employ the upright and put aside all the crooked. In this way the crooked can be made to be upright." The expression of "employing the upright and putting aside all the crooked" means that it is necessary to select wise and able persons to lead and manage this society. Mencius also said: "We should give honor to men of talents and virtue and employ the able." What he meant is that we should let those people with high moral standard and great capability to administer the country. This idea is completely in line with the goal of modern democracy. In addition, Mencius also severely criticized those autocrats and traitors of the people. He said: "When the prince regards his ministers as his hands and feet, his ministers regard their prince as their belly and heart; when he regards them as his dogs and horses, they regard him as another compatriot; when the prince regards his ministers as the ground or grass to trample upon, then they regard him as an enemy." When the king Xuan of Qi asked him how he considered the matters related to the King Tang of Shang destroying the King Jie of Xia and the King Wu of Zhou destroying the King Zhou of Shang, Mencius said: "He robs a good man is called a robber; he who harms a righteous man is called a barbarian. These robbers and barbarians are outcasts. I have heard of the execution of these two kinds of outcasts, but never the putting a sovereign to death." When these ideas of Mencius was introduced to the West, some say they influenced the French Revolution. Mencius' ideas do not favor autocrats who want to maintain their rule. Therefore When Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang of the Ming Dynasty read these remarks by Mencius, he was very upset. He went so far as to order the removal of Mencius' statues from Confucius Temples and personally deleted these remarks. Therefore, democratic idea in a simple form did exist in pre-Qin Confucian thought. These democratic ideas are not totally opposite to modern democratic theories.

 

Why did Western culture develop a political system of freedom and democracy while China got bogged down deeper and deeper in the mire of despotic dictatorship? I believe that one of the important reasons is that China's traditional culture only puts forward moral restrictions on the rulers but fails to design corresponding institutional restrictions. China's traditional culture only hopes that the rulers will carry out on their own initiative the concept of the "whole world being one community" but does not have a corresponding system to ensure that the rulers must carry out the concept of the "whole world being one community." In the minds of Confucian scholars and Taoist scholars, the most ideal rulers are "sages" who know everything and can do anything. The Scripture of Ethics describes how a sage can rule the world. The Analects of Confucius describes how gentlemen can refine their moral character so as to assist the sage to rule the world. Therefore, over the past several thousands years, the concept of "intelligent rulers and virtuous ministers" has always represented the highest ideal of the Chinese people. Undoubtedly, it is reasonable to put forward moral restrictions on the rulers. But this is not enough because moral restrictions are very weak in the face of power. Once the rulers get an absolutely unrestrained power, they might become degenerated and harm the interests of the people for the sake of their selfish desires.

 

Over the past two thousand years and more, China has been ruled by autocratic sovereigns, true "intelligent rulers and virtuous ministers" were few and far between. Most of them were mediocre and incapable. Some even were tyrants who ruled the country cruelly. They were what Mencius described as autocrats and traitors of the people who were harmful to the country. With regard to these rulers, the Chinese culture has failed to create an institutional check-and-balance mechanism. As a result, these fatuous and self-indulgent rulers and these tyrants were able to do whatever they wanted to do while the people of the country suffered from agonies and hardships. This is a sad story of the Chinese traditional culture. In fact, during the Spring and Autumn Period [ 770-476 BC] and the Period of Warring States [ 475-221 BC] when the Chinese culture enjoyed great development, Confucius, Mencius, Lao Zi, Zhuang Zi, and others should had a clear understanding of the rulers of all states of their times. In their minds, these rulers were not "sages and intelligent rulers" as what they expected and simply could not meet the moral requirements as put forward by Confucius, Mencius, Lao Zi, and Zhuang Zi. Under this situation, Confucius, Mencius, Lao Zi, and Zhuang Zi still did not think about the necessity of institutional restrictions. This is really unfortunate for the Chinese culture.

 

The Chinese culture's excessive emphasis on morality originates from the Confucian theory that claims human nature is good. Pre-Qin Confucian scholars believed the nature of a person is good and each person is born with a sense of kindness, a sense of shame, and a sense of shame right and wrong. They believed that people become bad because they are affected by the environment after their birth. Therefore, they believed that people can become a moral person with studies and personal refinement, as Mencius put it: "All men may be Yaos and Shuns." Because of this reason, they pinned their hopes of the realization of the ideal society on the moral refinement of each and every person. They urged people to unswervingly cultivate their moral characters. Particularly, they urged the rulers of the country to become sages or gentlemen with high moral standard through moral cultivation. This is completely different from the idea that human nature is bad as proposed by the Western culture. In Christian culture of the West, a person is considered as imperfect. Even a person with perfect personal character also has an original sin. Therefore, in Christian civilization, a person, however great he is, is considered as a person who is prone to make mistake or commit crimes. Therefore, when he is in power, people naturally will take precautions against him and restrict him. As a result, the theories of freedom, democracy, human rights, and constitutional government naturally emerge.

 

However, in the Period of Warring States of the Pre-Qin era, Xun Zi already questioned about the theory that claims human nature is good. In addition, he put forward a theory that claims human nature is bad. Later, Legalists [a school of thought in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods, 770-221 BC] put forward various views on the basis of the theory that claims human nature is bad, urging that the rulers must always take precautions against their ministers and subjects and use a complete set of systems to control the thinking and action of their ministers and subjects. However, Legalists made a grave mistake. Instead of applying the theory that claims human nature is bad on the rulers, they put forward a series of proposals to deal with ministers and subjects. Not a single proposal is used to restrict the rulers. Therefore, the theories put forward by Legalists turned out to be an accomplice that helps establish and develop China's autocratic system. Since the Qin Dynasty, the rulers of successive dynasties in fact have madly clung to the advantages of the theories put forward by Legalists, although they superficially held Confucianism in esteem. This is what is called "exterior Confucianism and interior Legalism." They used beautifully worded Confucian terms to justify the legitimacy of their rule. Meanwhile, they used harsh law and severe punishment proposed by Legalists to suppress the ministers and the people. This is the major characteristic of eastern autocracy.

 

Therefore, no matter whether they were Confucianists, Taoists, or Legalists, they failed to put forward institutional restrictions on the rulers. This is a major shortcoming of the Chinese culture. In the pre-Qin era, there was still some freedom in Chinese society. Particularly, the class of literati and officialdom still had some rights of freedom. For example, Confucius once said: "A prince should employ his minister according to the rules of propriety; ministers should serve their prince with faithfulness." (Section 19, Ba Yi [eight rows of dancers at sacrifices], the Analects of Confucius) In other words, the loyalty of a subject to his king is conditional, which means that a king must respect his subject. If a king does not respect his subject, his subject has a right not to be loyal to his king. Therefore, when Confucius was elbowed out by others, he left the Kingdom of Lu. When Duke Zhuang of Qi was killed for vying for a woman, Yan Zi did not mourn for him. Mencius also once said: "When scholars are put to death without any crime, the great officers may leave the country. When the people are slaughtered without any crime, the scholars may remove." (Li Lou II) Therefore, in the pre-Qin era, there was not an inexorable relationship of dependence between the class of literati and officialdom on the one hand and the rulers on the other hand.

 

However, beginning from the Qin Dynasty when China's autocratic system of the imperial power was established, the class of literati and officialdom began to lose this freedom. They no longer had a free choice as to whom they want to be loyal to. Their rights, status, and even lives had lost the fundamental protection. According to the Ceremonies of Zhou, "the penal statutes do not go up to great officers." But in the autocratic society since the Qin Dynasty, autocratic monarchies held an absolute power to control the life and death of their subjects because the king "wants his subject to die, his subject has to die." Even the literati and officialdom with a higher social status lost their basic human rights. One can imagine the fate of commoners. Since then, each and every Chinese people had to subject themselves to the supreme imperial power, they lost the dignity, freedom, and rights as a human being. Every one became a slave who was used and trampled on by the despotic imperial power.

 

Under the role of the powerful despotic imperial power, the national character of the Chinese people also underwent a tremendous change. All people became timid, selfish, and sly. Sometimes, they even were distorted to the extent of abnormality. In order to protect oneself or to pursuit interests, everybody tried to attain his end by hook or by crook. Gentlemen with noble character had been decreasing in number. Villain culture and servile culture had become popular in this society. The moral teaching of Confucianism had become the moral empty talk which served to cheat oneself and others. It had become a decoration for the despotic imperial power. At the same time, the spread of the servile culture had encouraged the consolidation and development of despotism. Despotists were in urgent need of those who always did as they were told. In addition, they were very good at provoking and controlling the endless internal struggle between gentlemen and villains. It was through this internal struggle, they gradually consolidated their own autocratic rule. Therefore, the servile culture without dignity and freedom was an important condition for maintaining the despotism for a long period of time. All the calamities of our nation were not completely forced on us by the despotic rulers. Our national character and our culture also provided fertile soil for the growth and development of despotism.

 

Since despotic imperial power was not subject to restraint, the rulers could exploit the power in their hands without restrictions. Therefore, they unavoidably became corrupt and suppressed and plundered the people without any limit. When the people simply could not tolerate any longer, they would become reckless in desperation and rose up to resist, which resulted in severe social turmoil and recession. In this kind of turmoil, the economy, society, and culture would suffer from great destruction. Therefore, unrestricted autocracy is largely responsible for all the calamities of Chinese society has suffered over the past 2,000 years and more. In order to escape this cycle of calamity-destruction-reconstruction, it is necessary to establish a mechanism on the foundation of the culture which is skeptical of state power and which constrains state power, and clearly defines the distinction between the powers of the rulers and the rights of the people. From Western culture should be introduced the concept of constitutional democracy. China needs to absorb the essence of this principle and so protect the freedom and dignity of each person from the encroachment of state power. Only when the concept of constitutional democracy is internalized as an integral part of Chinese culture and becomes the basic concept of the nation, will we be able to remove conditions favorable to the growth of despotism. Only in this way can the happiness of our future generations be fundamentally guaranteed, and can Chinese society finally escape from eastern-style autocracy.

 

Written in "Baisheng Homeland" in Sichuan's Suining on 9 December 2009

The two-part episode The Incident presents two stories in parallel: a science-fiction adventure involving time-travel, electro-magnetism, and a mad scientist hoping to change things with a hydrogen bomb; and a fantasy myth involving mortals enslaved by ancient demigods, trying to change things with a knife and sacrificial fire. (In keeping with the disclaimer introduced earlier, it must be noted that ‘science’ and ‘fantasy’ are terms loosely applied, and that perhaps even the Jacob story might craft a more plausible scientific explanation than the Incident itself.) This work of fiction exists somewhere at the intersection of drama, sci-fi, and fantasy, but wholly within the category of Mythology. The episode’s first images evoke the dawn of human culture, the harnessed power of fire, shelters made of rock, hand-spun clothing and sandals, and primitive tools to gather fish from the ocean. After mankind adapted the necessary technology to survive, his mind began to expand to other pursuits, darkening his bare walls to produce painted images, carving majestic statues into rock, weaving decorative tapestries dyed different colors, telling stories through language, and even building ships to explore the seas (and planes to conquer the skies). Although Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey still holds the record for the longest flash-forward in cinema history, the centuries-long transition after the opening scene achieves a similar narrative effect. Even though man has evolved from taming the Promethean fire to building Edison’s light bulb to unleashing the power of the atom, our civilization is still in its infancy. Human beings themselves have not matured at the same rate as our technological progress. “They come. They fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same.” The same petty jealousies that motivated the biblical rivalry of Jacob and Esau, also inform our nuclear-age warfare. A doctor can now perform once-unthinkable paralysis-saving surgery on your spine, but can that same doctor ever fix his own backbone when dealing with his father? Even our artwork, after generations of progress from cave paintings to wireless transmission of digital media, have also taken us from Homer to New Kids on the Block.

  

LOCKE: Years later a visiting prince came into Michelangelo's studio and found the master staring at a single 18 foot block of marble. Then he knew that the rumors were true -- that Michelangelo had come in everyday for the last four months, stared at the marble, and gone home for his supper. So the prince asked the obvious -- what are you doing? And Michelangelo turned around and looked at him, and whispered, sto lavorando, I'm working. Three years later that block of marble was the statue of David.

 

Two special artifacts from this classic opening scene, which are revisited at the ending of the episode, deserve special attention. The first is Jacob’s tapestry. The meticulously hand-crafted decoration initially appears in incomplete form. He has emblazoned the top section of the tapestry with ancient Greek lettering, a phrase from Homer’s Odyssey: “May the Gods grant thee all that thy heart desires”. Under those letters, the Egyptian symbol of the Eye of Horus, a symbol of divine power, occupies the center, between two massive wings. When Ben arrives at the statue centuries later, Jacob’s masterpiece is complete. Arms stretch down from the eye, towards nine human figures, while two kings observe from both sides. The image offers a visual representation of Jacob’s long-term plan, to give each piece ‘a little push’ into place for his endgame. Presumably, those nine individuals correspond to Kate, Sawyer, Sayid, Ilana, Locke, Sun, Jin, Jack, and Hurley (although Ben might be the final person, as Ben received Jacob’s touch rather than Ilana). Much like the sequence of literal and figurative long cons that preceded this one, the tapestry doubles as a metaphor for the show’s writing process. The gods of this particular story, writers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, strung the audience along for several years, slowly revealing pieces, painting each character with care, until it was time to unveil this man behind the curtain. Of course, they understood that the journey was more important than the final destination. As Jacob later confesses: “It takes a very long time when you're making the thread, but, uh... I suppose that's the point, isn't it?”.

   

Allusions to outside mythology, of course, occur quite frequently on Lost. For every direct reference that the show makes, there are a dozen other meaningful comparisons to be made, some intentional (such as Apollo the son of Zeus, or Everything That Rises Must Converge) but many others are merely fortuitous. Minds working independently across the globe tend to converge on the same core ideas or mythemes. Mythology scholars have produced a number of different theories to explain why authors from different cultures, without any direct contact, produce legends with such striking similarities. Each theory of mythology necessary rests on a simplification and generalization, more valid for some works than for others. In my assessment, the work of French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss offers the deepest insight into the objectives of Lost-style myth-making. Lévi-Strauss posited that human beings organize information primarily through binary oppositions (pairs like faith-empiricism, freedom-determinism). The underlying storytelling purpose of any myth is to unify those irreconcilable opposites, or at least create the illusion that the conflict has been resolved. Through the clash of thesis and antithesis, we can arrive at a synthesis. The commonly-cited analysis of the tragedy of Oedipus Rex offers a useful example: Sophocles revealed the consequences for a son showing not nearly enough affection for one parent, by killing his father; and far too much affection for the other parent, by marrying his mother. The great Lost myth revolves around the mirroring psyches of its pair of heroes, Jack Shephard and John Locke, one child who received far too much parenting (with Christian pushing his adult son around the clock) and another child who received far too little parenting (with Cooper pushing his adult son out of the eight-story window). The endless dichotomies of Lost are indeed false ones, and no one who chooses one extreme side, can ever be fully correct.

  

LOCKE: Backgammon is the oldest game in the world. Archeologists found sets when they excavated the ruins of ancient Mesopotamia. Five thousand years old. That's older than Jesus Christ.

WALT: Did they have dice and stuff?

LOCKE: [nods] But theirs weren't made of plastic. Their dice were made of bones.

WALT: Cool.

LOCKE: Two players. Two sides. One is light … one is dark.

 

The second key artifact is Jacob’s home, the Statue itself. As confirmed through outside sources (although hardly apparent from the actual episode), the Statue represents the hippopotamus-headed Egyptian fertility goddess Tawaret. (The interior chamber also includes a painting of the Egyptian deity Isis, another goddess similarly associated with protection, birth, and motherhood.) Before this revelation, many people, including myself, predicted incorrectly that the Statue would depict Anubis, the jackal-faced god of death, judgment, and the underworld. Images of Anubis last appeared during Season Five's Dead is Dead, on the tunnel walls where Linus confronted the black Smoke, also known by its Greek mythological moniker, Cerberus. The overall implication here is that the dividing lines have been drawn, with Jacob’s light side linked to Life, with the Man in Black associated with Death. In flashback, Jacob’s touch breathes life in Locke’s fallen body, while his nemesis apparently has been manipulating corpses for years to help him commit a murder.

  

Among the ancient secrets revealed in this episode, Ricardus answers Ilana’s ongoing riddle “What lies in the shadow of the Statue?” with the Latin phrase: ille qui nos omnes servabit. The standard translation apparently characterizes Jacob as a messiah figure: the one who will save us all. Despite all preliminary indications, it would be a premature mistake to equate the light-dark imagery with a good-evil metaphor. As Frank Lapidus wisely remarks: “In my experience, the people who go out of their way to tell you that the good guys are the bad guys.” The basic conclusions are undisputed: Jacob wants to keep bringing people to the Island to bring about an Ending, while the Man in Black wants to kill Jacob and keep the Island isolated. (The physical acting of the two rivals even conveys their dueling outlooks, with Mark Pellegrino relaxing as he scans the horizon, but with Titus Welliver squinting uncomfortably in the reflected sunlight.) Conceivably, Jacob’s Ending, his desire for change, could include the death of all mankind, to make way for the birth of a new progressive era. A phrase on the bottom of his tapestry offers a foreboding hint of Jacob’s final solution to end human corruption: “Only the dead have seen the end of war”. Keep in mind, the first on-screen action of Jacob, the great fisher of men, was to gather life from the ocean, rip its guts out, and then devour it.

  

(Here is another fun etymological fact for all of the Latin lovers out there. Early in the episode, Bram and Ilana share a cryptic exchange about whether Frank might be a Candidate for their side, a term that undoubtedly will reappear in Season Six scripts. The Latin adjective candidatus literally means “dressed in white,” and Mr. Lapidus clearly fits that bill. The word developed its English meaning from the white gowns worn by Romans seeking senatorial election. The word also shares a common origin with the adjective candidus which could be used for its literal meaning of “white,” or in a more figurative sense as “clear”, “candid”, or in other words “Frank.”)

  

MIKHAIL: Ha! Don’t waste your time. For ten years I have tried to defeat that game. But it was programmed by three grand masters. And it cheats.

LOCKE: Hmm. Well, I’ve played a lot of computers and I’m pretty sure they don’t know how to cheat. That’s what makes being human so distinctly wonderful.

 

For the first time, The Incident allows the viewer to rise up from a ground-level view of the game pieces on earth, to see the chess board from the player’s perspective in the sky. The story begins with the Man in White and the Man in Black trapped in an eternal stalemate. The fisherman Jacob gathers people from the seas, and then his enemy the hunter watches them destroy each other. Like the layman’s definition of insanity, Jacob repeats the same action over and over, while expecting a different result, faithful that one day the humans will change their nature, and the outcome. As Jacob points out, though, time is on his side: only one counterexample is necessary to disprove a negative. The rules of the game favor an endless cycle of perfectly symmetrical violence, until one of the players can find a way to change, break, or at least bend the rules. The Man in Black found the loophole in the rules that would allow him to kill Jacob. Evidently, he needed to impersonate Locke (and a number of other departed souls along the way) in order to persuade Ben, the leader of the Others, to choose to murder Jacob. At the same time, Jacob knew that his opponent would exploit the technicality eventually. In response, Jacob found his own way to cheat the rules: he brought a handful of special individuals to the Island, so that they could erase the events that lead to his death. To borrow a key phrase from Lost creator J.J. Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek opus: “Going back in time, changing history ... that's cheating.” Both master plans required a tremendous degree of faith in mankind: Jacob placed his confidence in the better angels of our nature, the ability of separate individuals to collaborate on one final goal; the Man in Black went all-in gambling on the inherent weakness of Locke, the corruption of Ben, and the mindlessness of his followers.

  

Their debate about whether mankind can change its nature arrives alongside the time-travel corollary question of whether human beings can alter their future. The “we’re the variables” framework presented in Season Five - note the emphasis on the plural - suggests that one person acting alone cannot alter history. Due to our natural tendency to oppose each other, the reactions of some other person will negate that action. Season Five's test case demonstrated the principle, as Kate's efforts to save little Benjamin negated Sayid's attempts to destroy him. The light will drive away the darkness, and vice-versa. However, if enough individuals combine in an effort to alter history, then the magnetism of their aggregate positive charge can overcome the negative pull. When the dark energy approaches the Swan (Jack, Sayid, Jin, and Hurley - all shown as adults in flashback), the forces of light gather to stop them (James, Juliet, and Kate – each one appearing as a child). The ensuing argument between echoes the central time-travel issue of Season Five: James asserts “What’s done is done,” and Jack responds “If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.” The resulting boxing match between the Black-Jack and Light-LaFleur depicts the larger war between the dueling demigods in microcosm: the two men are evenly matched when trading punches, so James exploits a few holes in Jack’s rulebook. In the end, though, one side prevails with nothing more than a little push to tip the scales. Juliet’s paradoxical, circular logic, a freely-willed decision grounded on her concept of predestination, resolves the conflict into its synthesis.

   

BERNARD: You realize we're the only two married guys on the island?

[He shows his ring]

BERNARD: Married?

JIN: Married.

BERNARD: Yeah, well, no, not to each other. No. (laughing) You got it. It's not easy, is it? Oh, I mean, it's--it's wonderful, but... let's face it, every decision that you make takes twice as long. 'Cause you always gotta talk them into it.

 

The episode’s black-and-white motif takes on a completely different meaning in the context of the Island’s two married couples. Part One includes the long-awaited return of Rose and Bernard, a couple whose bond transcends not only the color barrier between black and white, but also the perhaps deeper divide between a woman of faith and a man of science. The retired couple sets the example that the children refuse to follow, to lay down their differences and evolve into peaceful harmony. Subsequent flashbacks also reunite our other married couple, the wedding between Sun in her white dress and Jin in his black tuxedo. Western observers often mistakenly refer to the prominent Eastern symbols of yin and yang, as images of the struggle between good and evil. On the contrary, the black-and-white emblem common from Chinese philosophy (also incorporated into the flag of South Korea) represents duality rather than polarity. The dark and the light, the male and the female, instead of opposing each other become unified halves of a stronger whole. Jin provides another useful image: “We will never be apart, because being apart would be like the sky being apart from the earth.” Their wedding rings reinforce the idea of interconnectedness between the two halves of the same story, an unbreakable bond despite decades of separation. Sun’s later discovery of Charlie’s Driveshaft ring suggests a similar connection between the living and the dead, the past and the future. On a more depressing note, this episode also includes a third married couple, with the tragedy of Sayid and Nadia. While Sayid bleeds to death from his gunshot wound on the island, he suffers a deeper wound in flashback, his own sky being ripped away from his earth.

   

In what is either a sheer accident, or the product of intelligent design, the dark and light phenomenon even extends into the ongoing turmoil between the episode’s four romantic leads. On the physical level, James and Juliet share the same light-haired, lighter-eyed look of Jacob, while Jack and Kate share the same dark-haired, darker-eyed look of his nemesis. As Radzinsky might attest, basic electromagnetism holds that like charges repel and opposite charges attract. Even heading into the final season, the love quadrangle has never settled into a stable equilibrium, due to a peculiar mix of shared-physical-traits-with-opposite-personality-traits and vice versa. If you wanted a second opinion from Dr. Freud, then he could tell you a thing or too about Ms. Austen and Mrs. Shephard, Ms. Burke and Mrs. Ford. (Speaking of Freud, what can a psychoanalyst say about writers who changed temporarily the name of one of its leads from the revenge-driven Sawyer to flower-sniffing LaFleur. The Flower, as it translates from French to English, is traditionally associated with femininity, fertility, and even serves a common symbol for a certain part of the female anatomy. Fortunately, The Incident confirms that, “there ain’t no more LaFleur,” and with it the nominal castration of James Ford comes to an end.) The Incident focuses much of its creative energy on manufacturing motivations for each of the four lovers, to join forces to detonate Jughead, mostly at the expense of the supporting players. For each of these four characters, Lindelof and Cuse go too far in spelling out the answers to the audience in childish black-and-white terms, when shades of adult gray would have sufficed.

  

KATE: So, do you believe it?

JACK: Believe what?

KATE: That everything's going to be okay?

JACK: Yeah, I do.

KATE: Kind of unlike you -- the whole glass half-full thing.

JACK: There's a glass?

 

The childish immaturity of adults often comes across in a negative light, but child-like innocence can also be seen as a positive trait. Hurley, more than any other character, has been blessed (or, depending on your perspective, cursed) with the heart of a child. The adult Hugo not only enjoys a nice cherry Fruit Rollup on his ride home from jail, but he is thoughtful enough to offer to share it with a stranger. Just as any girl Juliet’s age will blame her own actions for her parents’ failed marriage, Hurley similarly internalizes the misfortunes of others as his own personal shortcoming. Hurley’s conversation with Jacob carries the same tune as any kid in need of parental guidance. Jacob’s words add another classic binary opposition to this tapestry of black and white: optimism and pessimism. There are always two ways to look at any situation. Even the darkest curse might be viewed as a brilliant blessing in disguise. As a point of caution, though, the converse of that principle also holds some merit. Throughout this story, Jack plays the unlikely role of a zealous optimist. Absolutely confident in the plan’s improbable success, he illuminates all of the wonderful merits of the revised timeline (Sayid’s life will be saved, Jin will get reunite with Sun, Claire will have the chance to keep Aaron, etc.). Foolish optimism can be a more dangerous force than cautious pessimism. His alternate future easily could result in an abyss of darkness, rather than a beacon of sunshine.

  

After so many rays of hope, the story of John Locke now ends in the gloomiest depths of tragedy. Frank quotes the same eternal question that links together Through the Looking Glass with There’s No Place Like Home: “What’s in the box?”. Three years later, the answer remains the same: Locke’s rotting corpse. John's life ended with him alone, miserable, and a failure. He was a puppet on strings, pulled by Cooper, by Ben, and by the Man in Black, and then discarded as a piece of trash, like on the day he was born. In a way, the entity now occupying Locke’s body has been fulfilling John Locke’s lifelong dreams. Locke always wanted to become a decisive leader, a man strong enough stand up to the Coopers and Linuses and Jacobs of the world. This master pulling the strings is unburdened by John’s emotional scars, his neediness, his self-doubt, even his morality. John’s ambitions of divinity could not be reconciled with his identity as a mortal, so one of those two needed to die. Even so, Locke’s tragic curse can be viewed as a blessing of martyrdom. Seemingly, Locke’s last chance for redemption hinges upon the success of Shephard’s mission to erase history. His phony resurrection in The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham could be explained only by a cheap deus ex machina. The alternative option, resuming his life in a wheelchair at LAX, would be the product of his own leadership, the effect of mentoring Jack into a true believer. Jack drops the warhead onto the Swan site, like a kid tossing a coin into a wishing well, with the hope that when the magic box opens again, whatever he imagines will come true.

   

LOCKE: You have to do it.

JACK: You do it yourself, John.

LOCKE: No, you saw the film, Jack. This is a two person job, at least. […] I can't do this alone, Jack. I don't want to. It's a leap of faith, Jack.

 

Jack’s mad quest to detonate the bomb and prevent the Incident should remind the audience of Locke’s equally mad quest to end the 108-minute cycle of button-pushing once and for all. The content of Season Two’s Live Together, Die Alone resembles The Incident in other ways as well, a two-hour flashback episode to introduce a new character, with a timer ticking down to a scheduled event, which ends with one last heroic gesture to "make it all go away" in a flash of light. (Also, it never hurts to add liberal doses of the Great Radzinsky into your script.) These two episodes pull their characters violently towards the same magnetic focal point, with metal projectiles flying through the air. In each case, the man of faith puts his blind beliefs to an empirical test, to find a yes-or-no, black-and-white scientific question. Locke told us: “I’m more sure about this than anything in my entire life,” and he was wrong. For Jack, the words are: “Nothing... nothing in my life has ever felt so right.” (These statements also reveal a great deal about the degree of confidence the two men felt in themselves over the years.) The destinies of these two great men have been intertwined quite beautifully. Indeed, the outcome of one question hinges upon the answer to the other. If Jack had succeeded in destroying the energy, then Locke would have been correct as the timer ticked down to zero. On the other hand, if the Button truly served no purpose, then Oceanic 815 would have crashed regardless of any Incident, and Jack’s plan would have no effect on the timeline. I cannot help but admire their pure strength of will required to risk everything, seemingly beyond good and evil, beyond fate and free will.

  

Lost’s famous Live Together, Die Alone dichotomy reappears in another form, in the story of Juliet. When Jack first spoke those words in Season One’s White Rabbit, he phrased it as an either-or choice: “if we can’t live together, then we’re going to die alone.” When Juliet references the mantra in The Incident, she makes a crucial misstatement, “Live together and die alone” (at least, according to the closed-captions on my DVD.) A few minutes later, Juliet indeed does die alone, in the hope that everyone else might live again, together at LAX. The method of her death, proved to be an inspired creative choice. James, who tried desperately to lift John from the well in This Place is Death, once again found himself on the losing end of a tug-of-war with the grim reaper. Despite moving on from the death of his parents to build a new life, he finds himself in the same place as his childhood self in Tennessee, losing the woman he loves most in the world. The magnetically-charged chains, pulling her down into the gaping hole, offers a more scientific counterpart to the fantasy-inspired image of the Smoke Monster’s black hand of Death. Chains commonly serve as a symbol of restraint, imprisonment, inevitability, the antithesis of human liberty. In the famous words of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." Pulled underground against her will, Juliet makes one last free choice, to erase countless freely-willed decisions of others. She achieves her destiny by destroying the chain of events that caused her to fulfill that destiny.

  

When the final white screen with black letters appears for the first time, after five years of white-on-black writing, the implication is clear: the Lost universe as we know it has inverted itself. The central binary dilemma of Season Five hangs in the balance with the flash of light. Two players, two sides. Did the events of the Season-Five-ending Incident prevent the Season One-opening Pilot’s crash of Oceanic 815? Or did the characters cause the very future they were trying to prevent? Both options offer a mix of positives and negatives. A brand new timeline would offer fresh storytelling opportunities, and a chance to revisit old friends long gone. On the other hand, the explosion would also incinerate the entire five-season hand-crafted tapestry of the Island story. The entire post-1977 universe, including the 2007 storyline of the Incident, would amount to nothing more than a dream. Preserving the old timeline would re-affirm the show’s fundamental rules for meaningful storytelling stakes: dead is dead; whatever happened, happened. With that solution, the entire time-travel story arc that lead to this finale event, and all those post-cliffhanger months of anticipation, would become meaningless. (Logistically, I don’t think either solution even makes much logical sense.) Perhaps the fatal flaw of this debate is that we view it as a debate. As Juliet did, maybe we should simple replace the word ‘OR’ with the word ‘AND’. There can be two universes, one in which Jacob succeeds, and one in which the Man in Black succeeds. Instead of conflict, we can find harmony. As the men who first painted on cave walls understood, one color is not enough. A world of pure white and a world of pure black would be indistinguishable from chaos. But, when you combine the dark and the light in some kind of balance, then any work of art becomes possible.

       

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufism

 

Sufism (Arabic: تصوّف‎) taṣawwuf,(Persian: صوفی گری) also spelled as tasavvuf and tasavvof according to the Persian pronunciation, is generally understood to be the inner, mystical dimension of Islam.[1][2][3] A practitioner of this tradition is generally known as a ṣūfī (صُوفِيّ), though some adherents of the tradition reserve this term only for those practitioners who have attained the goals of the Sufi tradition. Another name used for the Sufi seeker is Dervish.

 

Classical Sufi scholars have defined Sufism as "a science whose objective is the reparation of the heart and turning it away from all else but God."[4] Alternatively, in the words of the renowned Darqawi Sufi teacher Ahmad ibn Ajiba, "a science through which one can know how to travel into the presence of the Divine, purify one’s inner self from filth, and beautify it with a variety of praiseworthy traits."[5]

 

hile all Muslims believe that they are on the pathway to God and will become close to God in Paradise — after death and after the "Final Judgment" — Sufis also believe that it is possible to draw closer to God and to more fully embrace the Divine Presence in this life.[14] The chief aim of all Sufis is to seek the pleasing of God by working to restore within themselves the primordial state of fitra,[15] described in the Qur'an. In this state nothing one does defies God, and all is undertaken by the single motivation of love of God.Template:Fact=November 2009 A secondary consequence of this is that the seeker may be led to abandon all notions of dualism or multiplicity, including a conception of an individual self, and to realize the Divine Unity.Template:Fact=November 2009

 

Thus Sufism has been characterized[by whom?] as the science of the states of the lower self (the ego), and the way of purifying this lower self of its reprehensible traits, while adorning it instead with what is praiseworthy, whether or not this process of cleansing and purifying the heart is in time rewarded by esoteric knowledge of God. This can be conceived in terms of two basic types of law (fiqh), an outer law concerned with actions, and an inner law concerned with the human heart.[citation needed] The outer law consists of rules pertaining to worship, transactions, marriage, judicial rulings, and criminal law — what is often referred to, a bit too broadly, as shariah. The inner law of Sufism consists of rules about repentance from sin, the purging of contemptible qualities and evil traits of character, and adornment with virtues and good character.[16]

 

To enter the way of Sufism, the seeker begins by finding a teacher, as the connection to the teacher is considered necessary for the growth of the pupil. The teacher, to be genuine, must have received the authorization to teach (ijazah) of another Master of the Way, in an unbroken succession (silsilah) leading back to Sufism's origin with Muhammad. It is the transmission of the divine light from the teacher's heart to the heart of the student, rather than of worldly knowledge transmitted from mouth to ear, that allows the adept to progress. In addition, the genuine teacher will be utterly strict in his adherence to the Divine Law.[17]

 

Scholars and adherents of Sufism are unanimous in agreeing that Sufism cannot be learned through books.[dubious – discuss] To reach the highest levels of success in Sufism typically requires that the disciple live with and serve the teacher for many, many years.[citation needed] For instance, Baha-ud-Din Naqshband Bukhari, considered founder of the Naqshbandi Order, served his first teacher, Sayyid Muhammad Baba As-Samasi, for 20 years, until as-Samasi died. He subsequently served several other teachers for lengthy periods of time. The extreme arduousness of his spiritual preparation is illustrated by his service, as directed by his teacher, to the weak and needy members of his community in a state of complete humility and tolerance for many years. When he believed this mission to be concluded, his teacher next directed him to care for animals, curing their sicknesses, cleaning their wounds, and assisting them in finding provision. After many years of this he was next instructed to spend many years in the care of dogs in a state of humility, and to ask them for support.[18]

 

As a further example, the prospective adherent of the Mevlevi Order would have been ordered to serve in the kitchens of a hospice for the poor for 1,001 days prior to being accepted for spiritual instruction, and a further 1,001 days in solitary retreat as a precondition of completing that instruction.[19]

 

Some teachers, especially when addressing more general audiences, or mixed groups of Muslims and non-Muslims, make extensive use of parable, allegory, and metaphor.[20] Although approaches to teaching vary among different Sufi orders, Sufism as a whole is primarily concerned with direct personal experience, and as such has sometimes been compared to other, non-Islamic forms of mysticism (e.g., as in the books of Seyyed Hossein Nasr).

 

Sufism, which is a general term for Muslim mysticism, sprang up largely in reaction against the worldliness which infected Islam when its leaders became the powerful and wealthy rulers of multitudes of people and were influenced by foreign cultures. Harun al-Rashid, eating off gold and silver, toying with a harem of scented beauties, surrounded by an impenetrable retinue of officials, eunuchs and slaves, was a far cry from the stern simplicity of an Umar, who lived in the modest house, wore patched clothes and could be approached by any of his followers.[21][neutrality disputed]

 

The typical early Sufi lived in a cell of a mosque and taught a small band of disciples. The extent to which Sufism was influenced by Buddhist and Hindu mysticism, and by the example of Christian hermits and monks, is disputed, but self-discipline and concentration on God quickly led to the belief that by quelling the self and through loving ardour for God it was possible to maintain a union with the divine in which the human self melted away.[21]

 

During the primary stages of Sufism, Sufis were characterised by their particular attachment to dhikr "remembrance [of God]" and asceticism. Sufism arose among a number of Muslims as a reaction against the worldliness of the early Umayyad Caliphate (661-750 CE[6]). The Sufi movement has spanned several continents and cultures over a millennium, at first expressed through Arabic, then through Persian, Turkish and a dozen other languages.[7] ṭuruq "Orders", which are either Sunnī or Shī‘ī in doctrine, mostly trace their origins from the Islamic Prophet Muhammad through his cousin ‘Alī, with the notable exception of the Naqshbandi who trace their origins through the first Caliph, Abu Bakr.[8]

 

According to Idries Shah, the Sufi philosophy is universal in nature, its roots predating the arising of Islam and the other modern-day religions; likewise, some Muslims[who?] feel that Sufism is outside the sphere of Islam,[1][9][10] although generally scholars of Islam contend that it is simply the name for the inner or esoteric dimension of Islam.[1]

 

The lexical root of Sufi is variously traced to صُوف ṣūf "wool", referring either to the simple cloaks the early Muslim ascetics wore, or possibly to صَفا ṣafā "purity". The two were combined by al-Rudhabari who said, "The Sufi is the one who wears wool on top of purity."[11] The wool cloaks were sometimes a designation of their initiation into the Sufi order. The early Sufi orders considered the wearing of this coat an imitation of Jesus. Sufism is known as "Islamic Mysticism," in which Muslims seek to find divine love and knowledge through direct personal experience of God.[12] Mysticism is defined as the experience of mystical union or direct communion with ultimate reality, and the belief that direct knowledge of God, spiritual truth, or ultimate reality can be attained through subjective experience (as intuition or insight).[13]

 

Others[who?] suggest the origin of the word ṣufi is from Aṣhab aṣ-ṣuffa "Companions of the Porch", who were a group of impoverished Muslims during the time of Muhammad who spent much of their time on the veranda of Al-Masjid al-Nabawi, devoted to prayer and eager to memorize each new increment of the Qur'an as it was revealed. Yet another etymology, advanced by the 10th century Persian historian Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī is that the word is linked with Greek word sophia "wisdom".

 

Bayazid Tayfur al-Bistami

 

Bayazid is considered to be "of the six bright stars in the firmament of the Prophet (sallallaahu 'alaihi wa sallam)",[22] and a link in the Golden Chain of the Naqshibandi Tariqah. Bayazid al-Bistami was the first one to spread the reality of Annihilation (Fana'), whereby the Mystic becomes fully absorbed to the point of becoming unaware of himself or the objects around him. Every existing thing seems to vanish, and he feels free of every barrier that could stand in the way of his viewing the Remembered One. In one of these states, Bayazid cried out: "Praise to Me, for My greatest Glory!" Bistami's belief in the Unity of all religions became apparent when asked the question: "How does Islam view other religions?" His reply was "All are vehicles and a path to God's Divine Presence." From a young age, he left his mother stating to her that he could not serve Allah and his mother at the same time.[23]

[edit] Ibn Arabi

 

Muhyiddin Muhammad b. 'Ali [Ibn 'Arabi][1] (or Ibn al-'Arabi) is considered to be one of the most important Sufi masters, although he never founded any order (tariqa). His writings, especially al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya and Fusus al-hikam, have been studied within all the Sufi orders as the clearest expression of tawhid (Divine Unity), though because of their recondite nature they were often only given to initiates. Later those who followed his teaching became known as the school of wahdat al-wujud (the Oneness of Being). He himself considered his writings to have been divinely inspired. As he expressed the Way to one of his close disciples, his legacy is that 'you should never ever abandon your servanthood ('ubudiyya), and that there may never be in your soul a longing for any existing thing'[24]. The following quotations give a flavour of his teaching: 'Whoever witnesses without ceasing what he was created for, in both this world and the next, is the Perfect Servant, the intended goal of the cosmos, the deputy of the whole cosmos'[25]. 'The self is an ocean without a shore. There is no end to the contemplation of it in this world or the next'[26]. 'God seeks from you your heart and gives to you all that you are. So purify and cleanse it [the heart] through presence, wakefulness and reverential fear'[27].

[edit] Junayd

 

Junayd al-Baghdadi (830-910 AD) was one of the great early Sufis and is a central figure in the golden chain of many Sufi orders. He laid the groundwork for sober mysticism in contrast to that of God-intoxicated Sufis like al-Hallaj, Bayazid Bastami and Abusaeid Abolkheir. In the process of trial* of al-Hallaj, his former disciple, Caliph of the time demanded his fatwa and he issued this fatwa: "From the outward appearance he is to die and we judge according to the outward appearance and God knows better". He is referred to by the Sufis as Sayyid-ut Taifa i.e. the leader of the group. He lived and died in the city of Baghdad.

 

* The utterances of Arabic: أنا الحق‎ Anā l-Ḥaqq "I am The Truth," by Mansur Al-Hallaj led to a long trial, and his subsequent imprisonment for 11 years in a Baghdad prison. He was tortured and publicly crucified on March 26, 922.

 

[edit] Mansur al-Hallaj

 

Mansur al-Hallaj is renowned for his claim "Ana-l-Haq" (I am the Truth), for which he was executed for apostasy. He is still revered by Sufis for his forthrightness. It is also said that during his prayers, he would say "O Lord! You are the guide of those who are passing through the Valley of Bewilderment. If I am a heretic, enlarge my heresy." [28]

[edit] History of Sufism

Main article: History of Sufism

[edit] Origins

 

In its early stages of development Sufism effectively referred to nothing more than the internalization of Islam.[29] According to one perspective, it is directly from the Qur’an, constantly recited, meditated, and experienced, that Sufism proceeded, in its origin and its development.[30] Others have held that Sufism is the strict emulation of the way of Muhammad, through which the heart's connection to the Divine is strengthened.[31]

 

From the traditional Sufi point of view, the esoteric teachings of Sufism were transmitted from Muhammad to those who had the capacity to acquire the direct experiential gnosis of God, which was passed on from teacher to student through the centuries. Some of this transmission is summarized in texts, but most is not. Important contributions in writing are attributed to Uwais al-Qarni, Harrm bin Hian, Hasan Basri and Sayid ibn al-Mussib, who are regarded as the first Sufis in the earliest generations of Islam. Harith al-Muhasibi was the first one to write about moral psychology. Rabia Basri was a Sufi known for her love and passion for God, expressed through her poetry. Bayazid Bastami was among the first theorists of Sufism; he concerned himself with fanā and baqā, the state of annihilating the self in the presence of the divine, accompanied by clarity concerning worldly phenomena derived from that perspective.[32]

 

Sufism had a long history already before the subsequent institutionalization of Sufi teachings into devotional orders (tarîqât) in the early Middle Ages.[33] Almost all extant Sufi orders trace their chains of transmission (silsila) back to Muhammad via his cousin and son-in-law Ali. The Naqshbandi order is a notable exception to this rule, as it traces the origin of its teachings from Muhammad to the first Islamic Caliph Abu Bakr.[8]

 

Different devotional styles and traditions developed over time, reflecting the perspectives of different masters and the accumulated cultural wisdom of the orders. Typically all of these concerned themselves with the understanding of subtle knowledge (gnosis), education of the heart to purify it of baser instincts, the love of God, and approaching God through a well-described hierarchy of enduring spiritual stations (maqâmât) and more transient spiritual states (ahwâl).

  

Towards the end of the first millennium CE, a number of manuals began to be written summarizing the doctrines of Sufism and describing some typical Sufi practices. Two of the most famous of these are now available in English translation: the Kashf al-Mahjûb of Hujwiri, and the Risâla of Qushayri.[34]

 

Two of Imam Al Ghazali's greatest treatises, the "Revival of Religious Sciences" and the "Alchemy of Happiness," argued that Sufism originated from the Qur'an and was thus compatible with mainstream Islamic thought, and did not in any way contradict Islamic Law — being instead necessary to its complete fulfillment. This became the mainstream position among Islamic scholars for centuries, challenged only recently on the basis of selective use of a limited body of texts. Ongoing efforts by both traditionally-trained Muslim scholars and Western academics are making Imam Al-Ghazali's works available in English translation for the first time,[35] allowing readers to judge for themselves the compatibility between Islamic Law and Sufi doctrine.

  

The spread of Sufism has been considered a definitive factor in the spread of Islam, and in the creation of integrally Islamic cultures, especially in Africa[36] and Asia. Recent academic work on these topics has focused on the role of Sufism in creating and propagating the culture of the Ottoman world,[37] and in resisting European imperialism in Africa and South Asia.[38]

 

Between the 13th and 16th centuries CE, Sufism produced a flourishing intellectual culture throughout the Islamic world, a sort of "Golden Age" whose physical artifacts are still present. In many places, a lodge (known variously as a zaouia, khanqah, or tekke) would be endowed through a pious foundation in perpetuity (waqf) to provide a gathering place for Sufi adepts, as well as lodging for itinerant seekers of knowledge. The same system of endowments could also be used to pay for a complex of buildings, such as that surrounding the Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul, including a lodge for Sufi seekers, a hospice with kitchens where these seekers could serve the poor and/or complete a period of initiation, a library, and other structures. No important domain in the civilization of Islam remained unaffected by Sufism in this period.[39]

[edit] Contemporary Sufism

 

Sufism suffered many setbacks in the modern era, particularly (though not exclusively) at the hands of European imperialists in the colonized nations of Asia and Africa. The life of the Algerian Sufi master Emir Abd al-Qadir is instructive in this regard.[40] Notable as well are the lives of Amadou Bamba and Hajj Umar Tall in sub-Saharan Africa, and Sheikh Mansur Ushurma and Imam Shamilin the Caucasus region. In the twentieth century some more modernist Muslims have called Sufism a superstitious religion that holds back Islamic achievement in the fields of science and technology. [41]

 

In spite of this recent history of official repression, there remain many places in the world with vital Sufi traditions. Sufism is popular in such African countries as Senegal, where it is seen as a mystical expression of Islam.[42] Mbacke suggests that one reason Sufism has taken hold in Senegal is because it can accommodate local beliefs and customs, which tend toward the mystical.[43]

 

In South Asia, four major Sufi orders persist, namely the Chishti Order, the Qadiriyyah, the Naqshbandiyya, and the Suhrawardiyya. The Barelwis and Deobandis are significant Islamic movements in this region whose followers often belong to one of these orders.[44]

 

For a more complete summary of currently active groups and teachers, readers are referred to links in the site of Dr. Alan Godlas of the University of Georgia.[45][46]

 

A number of Westerners have embarked with varying degrees of success on the path of Sufism. One of the first to return to Europe as an official representative of a Sufi path, and with the specific purpose to spread Sufism in Western Europe, was the Swedish-born wandering Sufi Abd al-Hadi Aqhili (also known as Ivan Aguéli). The ideas propagated by such spiritualists may or may not conform to the tenets of Sufism as understood by orthodox Muslims, as for instance with G. I. Gurdjieff and Shawni. On the other hand, American- and British-born teachers such as Nuh Ha Mim Keller, Hamza Yusuf, and Abdal Hakim Murad have been instrumental in spreading messages that conform fully with the normative tenets of Islam.

 

Other noteworthy Sufi teachers who have been active in the West in recent years include Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, Nader Angha, Inayat Khan, Nazim al-Qubrusi, Javad Nurbakhsh, Bulent Rauf[2]and Muzaffer Ozak.

[edit] Theoretical perspectives in Sufism

 

Traditional Islamic scholars have recognized two major branches within the practice of Sufism, and use this as one key to differentiating among the approaches of different masters and devotional lineages.[47]

 

On the one hand there is the path from the signs to the Signifier (or from the arts to the Artisan). In this branch, the seeker begins by purifying the lower self of every corrupting influence that stands in the way of recognizing all of creation as the work of God, as God's active Self-disclosure or theophany.[48] This is the way of Imam Al-Ghazali and of the majority of the Sufi orders.

 

On the other hand there is the path from the Signifier to His signs, from the Artisan to His works. In this branch the seeker experiences divine attraction (jadhba), and is able to enter the path with a glimpse of its endpoint, of direct apprehension of the Divine Presence towards which all spiritual striving is directed. This does not replace the striving to purify the heart, as in the other branch; it simply stems from a different point of entry into the path. This is the way primarily of the masters of the Naqshbandi and Shadhili orders.[49]

 

Contemporary scholars may also recognize a third branch, attributed to the late Ottoman scholar Said Nursi and explicated in his vast Qur'ân commentary called the Risale-i Nur. This approach entails strict adherence to the way of Muhammad, in the understanding that this wont, or sunnah, proposes a complete devotional spirituality adequate to those without access to a master of the Sufi way.[50]

[edit] Contributions to other domains of scholarship

 

Sufism has contributed significantly to the elaboration of theoretical perspectives in many domains of intellectual endeavor. For instance, the doctrine of "subtle centers" or centers of subtle cognition (known as Lataif-e-sitta) addresses the matter of the awakening of spiritual intuition[51] in ways that some consider similar to certain models of chakra in Hinduism. In general, these subtle centers or latâ'if are thought of as faculties that are to be purified sequentially in order to bring the seeker's wayfaring to completion. A concise and useful summary of this system from a living exponent of this tradition has been published by Muhammad Emin Er.[47]

 

Sufi psychology has influenced many areas of thinking both within and outside of Islam, drawing primarily upon three concepts. Ja'far al-Sadiq (both an imam in the Shia tradition and a respected scholar and link in chains of Sufi transmission in all Islamic sects) held that human beings are dominated by a lower self called the nafs, a faculty of spiritual intuition called the qalb or spiritual heart, and a spirit or soul called ruh. These interact in various ways, producing the spiritual types of the tyrant (dominated by nafs), the person of faith and moderation (dominated by the spiritual heart), and the person lost in love for God (dominated by the ruh).[52]

 

Of note with regard to the spread of Sufi psychology in the West is Robert Frager, a Sufi teacher authorized in the Halveti Jerrahi order. Frager was a trained psychologist, born in the United States, who converted to Islam in the course of his practice of Sufism and wrote extensively on Sufism and psychology.[53]

 

Sufi cosmology and Sufi metaphysics are also noteworthy areas of intellectual accomplishment.

[edit] Sufi practices

 

The devotional practices of Sufis vary widely. This is because an acknowledged and authorized master of the Sufi path is in effect a physician of the heart, able to diagnose the seeker's impediments to knowledge and pure intention in serving God, and to prescribe to the seeker a course of treatment appropriate to his or her maladies. The consensus among Sufi scholars is that the seeker cannot self-diagnose, and that it can be extremely harmful to undertake any of these practices alone and without formal authorization.[54]

 

Prerequisites to practice include rigorous adherence to Islamic norms (ritual prayer in its five prescribed times each day, the fast of Ramadan, and so forth). Additionally, the seeker ought to be firmly grounded in supererogatory practices known from the life of Muhammad (such as the "sunna prayers"). This is in accordance with the words, attributed to God, of the following, a famous Hadith Qudsi:

 

My servant draws near to Me through nothing I love more than that which I have made obligatory for him. My servant never ceases drawing near to Me through supererogatory works until I love him. Then, when I love him, I am his hearing through which he hears, his sight through which he sees, his hand through which he grasps, and his foot through which he walks.

 

It is also necessary for the seeker to have a correct creed (Aqidah),[55] and to embrace with certainty its tenets.[56] The seeker must also, of necessity, turn away from sins, love of this world, the love of company and renown, obedience to satanic impulse, and the promptings of the lower self. (The way in which this purification of the heart is achieved is outlined in certain books, but must be prescribed in detail by a Sufi master.) The seeker must also be trained to prevent the corruption of those good deeds which have accrued to his or her credit by overcoming the traps of ostentation, pride, arrogance, envy, and long hopes (meaning the hope for a long life allowing us to mend our ways later, rather than immediately, here and now).

 

Sufi practices, while attractive to some, are not a means for gaining knowledge. The traditional scholars of Sufism hold it as absolutely axiomatic that knowledge of God is not a psychological state generated through breath control. Thus, practice of "techniques" is not the cause, but instead the occasion for such knowledge to be obtained (if at all), given proper prerequisites and proper guidance by a master of the way. Furthermore, the emphasis on practices may obscure a far more important fact: The seeker is, in a sense, to become a broken person, stripped of all habits through the practice of (in the words of Imam Al-Ghazali words) solitude, silence, sleeplessness, and hunger.[57]

[edit] Dhikr

Main article: Dhikr

Allah as having been written on the disciple's heart according to Qadiri Al-Muntahi order

 

Dhikr is the remembrance of God commanded in the Qur'an for all Muslims through a specific devotional act, such as the repetition of divine names, supplications and aphorisms from hadith literature and the Qur'an. More generally, dhikr is any activity in which the Muslim maintains awareness of God.. To engage in dhikr is to practice consciousness of the Divine Presence and love, or "to seek a state of godwariness". Some types of dhikr are prescribed for all Muslims, and do not require Sufi initiation or the prescription of a Sufi master because they are deemed to be good for every seeker under every circumstance.[58]

 

Some Sufi orders engage in ritualized dhikr ceremonies, or sema. Sema includes various forms of worship such as: recitation, singing (the most well known being the Qawwali music of the Indian sub-continent), instrumental music, dance (most famously the Sufi whirling of the Mevlevi order), incense, meditation, ecstasy, and trance.[59]

 

Some Sufi orders stress and place extensive reliance upon Dhikr, and likewise in Qadri Al-Muntahi Sufi tariqa, which was originated by Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi. This practice of Dhikr is called Dhikr-e-Qulb (remembrance of Allah by Heartbeats). The basic idea in this practice is to visualize the Arabic name of God, Allah, as having been written on the disciple's heart.[60]

[edit] Muraqaba

Main article: Muraqaba

 

The practice of muraqaba can be likened to the practices of meditation attested in many faith communities. The word muraqaba is derived from the same root (r-q-b) occurring as one of the 99 Names of God in the Qur'an, al-Raqîb, meaning "the Vigilant" and attested in verse 4: 1 of the Qur'an. Through muraqaba, a person watches over or takes care of the spiritual heart, acquires knowledge about it, and becomes attuned to the Divine Presence, which is ever vigilant.

 

While variation exists, one description of the practice within a Naqshbandi lineage reads as follows:

 

He is to collect all of his bodily senses in concentration, and to cut himself off from all preoccupation and notions that inflict themselves upon the heart. And thus he is to turn his full consciousness towards God Most High while saying three times: “Ilahî anta maqsûdî wa-ridâka matlûbî — my God, you are my Goal and Your good pleasure is what I seek.” Then he brings to his heart the Name of the Essence — Allâh — and as it courses through his heart he remains attentive to its meaning, which is “Essence without likeness.” The seeker remains aware that He is Present, Watchful, Encompassing of all, thereby exemplifying the meaning of his saying (may God bless him and grant him peace): “Worship God as though you see Him, for if you do not see Him, He sees you.” And likewise the prophetic tradition: “The most favored level of faith is to know that God is witness over you, wherever you may be.”[61]

 

[edit] Sufi pilgrimages

The Darbar-e-Gohar Shahi Tomb in Kotri Sharif.

 

In popular Sufism (i.e., devotional practices that have achieved currency in world cultures through Sufi influence), one common practice is to visit the tombs of saints, great scholars, and righteous people. This is a particularly common practice in South Asia, where famous tombs include those of Khoja Afāq, near Kashgar, in China; Sachal Sarmast, in Sindh, Pakistan; and the Darbar-e-Gohar Shahi in Kotri Sharif. Likewise, in Fez, Morocco, a popular destination for such pious visitation is the Zaouia Moulay Idriss II and the yearly visitation to see the current Sheikh of the Qadiri Boutchichi Tariqah, Sheikh Sidi Hamza al Qadiri al Boutchichi to celebrate the Mawlid (which is usually televised on Mocorran National television).

 

Visitors may invoke blessings upon those interred, and seek divine favor and proximity.

  

[edit] Islam and Sufism

[edit] Sufism and Islamic law

Tomb of Shaikh Salim Chisti, Uttar Pradesh, India.

 

Scholars and adherents of Sufism sometimes describe Sufism in terms of a threefold approach to God as explained by a tradition (hadîth) attributed to Muhammad,"The Shariah is my words, the tariqa is my actions, and the haqiqa is my interior states". Sufis believe the shariah, tariqa and haqiqa are mutually interdependent.[62] The tariqa, the ‘path’ on which the mystics walk, has been defined as ‘the path which comes out of the Shariah, for the main road is called shar, the path, tariq.’ No mystical experience can be realized if the binding injunctions of the Shariah are not followed faithfully first. The path, tariqa, however, is narrower and more difficult to walk. It leads the adept, called sâlik (wayfarer), in his sulûk (wayfaring), through different stations (maqâmât) until he reaches his goal, the perfect tawhîd, the existential confession that God is One.[63] Jalaluddin Ar Rumi, the initiator of the Mavlevi Tariqah, spoke of the Shariah and Sufism in such terms, " To be a real Sufi, is to be to Muhammad, salalahu alaihy wasallam, just as Abu Bakr was to him, peace be upon him." Shaykh al-Akbar Muhiuddeen Ibn Arabi mentions," When we see someone in this Community who claims to be able to guide others to Allah, but is remiss in but one rule of the Sacred Law - even if he manifests miracles that stagger the mind - asserting that his shortcoming is a special dispensation for him, we do not even turn to look at him, for such a person is not a sheikh, nor is he speaking the truth, for no one is entrusted with the secrets of Allah Most High save one in whom the ordinances of the Sacred Law are preserved. (Jami' karamat al-awliya')" [64]

[edit] Traditional Islamic thought and Sufism

 

The literature of Sufism emphasizes highly subjective matters that resist outside observation, such as the subtle states of the heart. Often these resist direct reference or description, with the consequence that the authors of various Sufi treatises took recourse to allegorical language. For instance, much Sufi poetry refers to intoxication, which Islam expressly forbids. This usage of indirect language and the existence of interpretations by people who had no training in Islam or Sufism led to doubts being cast over the validity of Sufism as a part of Islam. Also, some groups emerged that considered themselves above the Sharia and discussed Sufism as a method of bypassing the rules of Islam in order to attain salvation directly. This was disapproved of by traditional scholars.

 

For these and other reasons, the relationship between traditional Islamic scholars and Sufism is complex and a range of scholarly opinion on Sufism in Islam has been the norm. Some scholars, such as Al-Ghazali, helped its propagation while other scholars opposed it. W. Chittick explains the position of Sufism and Sufis this way:

 

In short, Muslim scholars who focused their energies on understanding the normative guidelines for the body came to be known as jurists, and those who held that the most important task was to train the mind in achieving correct understanding came to be divided into three main schools of thought: theology, philosophy, and Sufism. This leaves us with the third domain of human existence, the spirit. Most Muslims who devoted their major efforts to developing the spiritual dimensions of the human person came to be known as Sufis.

 

[edit] Traditional and non-traditional Sufi groups

The mausoleum (gongbei) of Ma Laichi in Linxia City, China.

 

The traditional Sufi orders, which are in majority, emphasize the role of Sufism as a spiritual discipline within Islam. Therefore, the Sharia (traditional Islamic law) and the Sunnah are seen as crucial for any Sufi aspirant. One proof traditional orders assert is that almost all the famous Sufi masters of the past Caliphates were experts in Sharia and were renowned as people with great Iman (faith) and excellent practice. Many were also Qadis (Sharia law judges) in courts. They held that Sufism was never distinct from Islam and to fully comprehend and practice Sufism one must be an observant Muslim.

 

There is some speculation that some Sufi orders in India might have become influenced by other traditions after the translation of Greek philosophical works into Arabic during the third Islamic century. Sharda highlights these unsurprising similarities by stating that: "After the fall of Muslim orthodoxy from power at the centre of India for about a century, due to the invasion of Timur, the Sufi became free from the control of the Muslim orthodoxy and consorted with Hindu saints, who influenced them to an amazing extent. The Sufi adopted Monism and wifely devotion from the Vaishnava Vedantic school and Bhakti and Yogic practices from the Vaishnava Vedantic school. By that time, the popularity of the Vedantic pantheism among the Sufis had reached its zenith."[65]

 

In recent decades there has been a growth of non-traditional Sufi movements in the West. Examples include the Universal Sufism movement, the Golden Sufi Center, the Sufi Foundation of America, the neo-sufism of Idries Shah, Sufism Reoriented and the International Association of Sufism. Rumi has become one of the most widely read poets in the United States, thanks largely to the translations published by Coleman Barks.

[edit] Islamic positions on non-Islamic Sufi groups

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The use of the title Sufi by non-traditional groups to refer to themselves, and their appropriation of traditional Sufi masters (most notably Jalaluddin Rumi) as sources of authority or inspiration, is not accepted by some Muslims who are Sufi adherents.

 

Many of the great Sufi masters of the present and the past instruct that: one needs the form of the religious practices and the outer dimension of the religion to fulfill the goals of the inner dimension of Sufism (Proximity to God). The exoteric practices prescribed by God contain inner meanings and provide the means for transformation with the proper spiritual guidance of a master. It is thought that through the forms of the ritual and prescribed Islamic practices (prayer, pilgrimage, fasting, charity and affirmation of Divine Unity) the soul may be purified and one may then begin to embark on the mystical quest. In fact it is considered psychologically dangerous by some Sufi masters to participate in Sufi practices, such as "dhikr", without adhering to the outer aspects of the religion which add spiritual balance and grounding to the practice.

 

Some traditional Sufis also object to interpretations of classical Sufis texts by writers who have no grounding in the traditional Islamic sciences and therefore no prerequisites for understanding such texts. These are considered by certain conventional Islamic scholars as beyond the pale of the religion.[66] This being said, there are Islamic Sufi groups that are open to non-Muslim participation.

[edit] Reception

[edit] Perception outside Islam

 

Sufi mysticism has long exercised a fascination upon the Western world, and especially its orientalist scholars.[67] Figures like Rumi have become household names in the United States, where Sufism is perceived as quietist and less political.[67]

 

The Islamic Institute in Mannheim, Germany, which works towards the integration of Europe and Muslims, sees Sufism as particularly suited for interreligious dialogue and intercultural harmonisation in democratic and pluralist societies; it has described Sufism as a symbol of tolerance and humanism – undogmatic, flexible and non-violent.[68]

[edit] The Influence of Sufism on Judaism

 

A great influence was exercised by Sufism upon the ethical writings of Jews in the Middle Ages. In the first writing of this kind, we see "Kitab al-Hidayah ila Fara'iḍ al-Ḳulub", Duties of the Heart, of Bahya ibn Pakuda. This book was translated by Judah ibn Tibbon into Hebrew under the title "Ḥovot ha-Levavot".[69]

 

The precepts prescribed by the Torah number 613 only; those dictated by the intellect are innumerable.

 

This was precisely the argument used by the Sufis against their adversaries, the Ulamas. The arrangement of the book seems to have been inspired by Sufism. Its ten sections correspond to the ten stages through which the Sufi had to pass in order to attain that true and passionate love of God which is the aim and goal of all ethical self-discipline.

 

It is noteworthy that in the ethical writings of the Sufis Al-Kusajri and Al-Harawi there are sections which treat of the same subjects as those treated in the "Ḥobot ha-Lebabot" and which bear the same titles: e.g., "Bab al-Tawakkul"; "Bab al-Taubah"; "Bab al-Muḥasabah"; "Bab al-Tawaḍu'"; "Bab al-Zuhd". In the ninth gate, Baḥya directly quotes sayings of the Sufis, whom he calls Perushim. However, the author of the Ḥovot ha-Levavot did not go so far as to approve of the asceticism of the Sufis, although he showed a marked predilection for their ethical principles.

 

The Jewish writer Abraham bar Ḥiyya teaches the asceticism of the Sufis. His distinction with regard to the observance of Jewish law by various classes of men is essentially a Sufic theory. According to it there are four principal degrees of human perfection or sanctity; namely:

 

(1) of "Shari'ah," i.e., of strict obedience to all ritual laws of Islam, such as prayer, fasting, pilgrimage, almsgiving, ablution, etc., which is the lowest degree of worship, and is attainable by all

(2) of Ṭariqah, which is accessible only to a higher class of men who, while strictly adhering to the outward or ceremonial injunctions of religion, rise to an inward perception of mental power and virtue necessary for the nearer approach to the Divinity

(3) of "Ḥaḳikah," the degree attained by those who, through continuous contemplation and inward devotion, have risen to the true perception of the nature of the visible and invisible; who, in fact, have recognized the Godhead, and through this knowledge have succeeded in establishing an ecstatic relation to it; and

(4) of the "Ma'arifah," in which state man communicates directly with the Deity.

 

[edit] In popular culture

[edit] In movies

 

The movie Bab´Aziz (2005) directed by Nacer Khemir tells the story of an old and blind dervish who must cross the desert with his little granddaughter during many days and nights to get to his last dervish reunion celebrated every 30 years. The movie is full of Sufi mysticism and even contain quotes of Rumi and other sufi poets and shows an ecstatic sufi dance. In Monsieur Ibrahim Omar Sherrif's character professes to be a Muslim in the sufi tradition.

[edit] In music

 

Madonna, on her 1994 record Bedtime Stories sings a song called "Bedtime Story" that discusses achieving a high unconsciousness level. The video for the song shows an ecstatic Sufi ritual with many dervishes dancing, Arabic calligraphy and some other Sufi elements. In her 1998 song Bittersweet, she recites Rumi´s poem by the same name. In her 2001 Drowned World Tour, Madonna sang the song Secret showing rituals from many religions, including a Sufi dance.

 

Singer/songwritter Loreena McKennitt, on her record The Mask And Mirror (1994), has a song called The Mystic's Dream, influenced by Sufi music and poetry. The band, MewithoutYou, has made references to Sufi parables, including the name of their upcoming album It’s all crazy! It’s all false! It’s all a dream! It’s alright (2009). Lead singer, Aaron Weiss, claims this influence comes from his parents, who are both Sufi converts.

 

A.R. Rahman scored a Sufi Qawwali, Khwaja Mere Khwaja, in the Bollywood film Jodhaa Akbar.

 

Junoon, a band from Pakistan, is famous for creating the genre of Sufi rock by combining elements of modern hard rock and traditional folk music with Sufi poetry.

[edit] See also

Chitra, also spelled as Citra, is an Indian genre of art that includes painting, sketch and any art form of delineation. The earliest mention of the term Chitra in the context of painting or picture is found in some of the ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism and Pali texts of Buddhism

 

NOMENCLATURE

Chitra (IAST: Citra, चित्र) is a Sanskrit word that appears in the Vedic texts such as hymns 1.71.1 and 6.65.2 of the Rigveda. There, and other texts such as Vajasaneyi Samhita, Taittiriya Samhita, Satapatha Brahmana and Tandya Brahmana, Chitra means "excellent, clear, bright, colored, anything brightly colored that strikes the eye, brilliantly ornamented, extraordinary that evokes wonder". In the Mahabharata and the Harivamsa, it means "picture, sktech, dilineation", and is presented as a genre of kala (arts). Many texts generally dated to the post-4th-century BCE period, use the term Chitra in the sense of painting, and Chitrakara as a painter. For example, the Sanskrit grammarian Panini in verse 3.2.21 of his Astadhyayi highlights the word chitrakara in this sense. Halls and public spaces to display paintings are called chitrasalas, and the earliest known mention of these are found in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

 

A few Indian regional texts such as Kasyapa silpa refer to painting by others words. For example, abhasa – which literally means "semblance, shining forth", is used in Kasyapa-shilpa to mean as a broader category of painting, of which chitra is one of three types. The verses in section 4.4 of the Kasyapa-silpa state that there are three types of images – those which are immovable (walls, floor, terracota, stucco), movable, and those which are both movable-immovable (stone, wood, gems).[5] In each of these three, states Kasyapa-shipa, are three classes of expression – ardhacitra, citra, and citra-abhasa. Ardhacitra is an art form where a high relief is combined with painting and parts of the body is not seen (it appears to be emerging out of the canvas). The Citra is the form of picture artwork where the whole is represented with or without integrating a relief. Citrabhasha is the form where an image is represented on a canvas or wall with colors (painting). However, states Commaraswamy, the word Abhasa has other meanings depending on the context. For example, in Hindu texts on philosophy, it implies the "field of objective experience" in the sense of the intellectual image internalized by a person during a reading of a subject (such as an epic, tale or fiction), or one during a meditative spiritual experience.

 

In some Buddhist and Hindu texts on methods to prepare a manuscript (palm leaf) or a composition on a cloth, the terms lekhya and alekhya are also used in the context of a chitra. More specifically, alekhya is the space left while writing a manuscript leaf or cloth, where the artist aims to add a picture or painting to illustrate the text.

 

HISTORY

The earliest explicit reference to painting in an Indian text is found in verse 4.2 of the Maitri Upanishad where it uses the phrase citrabhittir or "like a painted wall". The Indian art of painting is also mention in a number of Buddhist Pali suttas, but with the modified spelling of Citta. This term is found in the context of either a painting, or painter, or painted-hall (citta-gara) in Majjhima Nikaya 1.127, Samyutta Nikaya 2.101 and 3.152, Vinaya 4.289 and others. Among the Jain texts, it is mentioned in Book 2 of the Acaranga Sutra as it explains that Jaina monk should not indulge in the pleasures of watching a painting.

 

The Kamasutra, broadly accepted to have been complete by about the 4th-century CE, recommends that the young man should surprise the girl he courts with gifts of color boxes and painted scrolls. The Viddhasalabhanjika – another Hindu kama- and kavya–text uses chitra-simile in verse 1.16, as "pictures painted by the god of love, with the brush of the mind and the canvas of the heart".

 

The nature of a chitra (painting), how the viewer's mind projects a two dimensional artwork into a three dimensional representation, is used by Asanga in Mahayana Sutralamkara – a 3rd to 5th-century Sanskrit text of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, to explain "non-existent imagination" as follows:

 

Just as in a picture painted according to rules, there are neither projections nor depressions and yet we see it in three dimensions, so in the non-existent imagination there is no phenomenal differentiation, and yet we behold it.

— Mahayana Sutralamkara 13.7, Translated in French by Sylvain Levi

 

According to Yoko Taniguchi and Michiyo Mori, the art of painting the caves at the c. 6th-century Buddhas of Bamiyan site in Afghanistan, destroyed by the Taliban Muslims in the late 1990s, were likely introduced to this region from India along with the literature on early Buddhism.

 

TEXTS

There are many important dedicated Indian treatises on chitra. Some of these are chapters within a larger encyclopedia-like text. These include:

 

Chitrasutras, chapters 35–43 within the Hindu text Vishnudharmottara Purana (the standard, and oft referred to text in the Indian tradition)

Chitralaksana of Nagnajit (a classic on classical painting, 5th-century CE or earlier making it the oldest known text on Indian painting; but the Sanskrit version has been lost, only version available is in Tibet and it states that it is a translation of a Sanskrit text)

Samarangana Sutradhara (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Aparajitaprccha (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Manasollasa (an encyclopedia, contains chapters on paintings)

Abhilashitartha chinatamani

Sivatatva ratnakara

Chitra Kaladruma

Silpa ratna

Narada silpa

Sarasvati silpa

Prajapati silpa

Kasyapa silpa

 

These and other texts on chitra not only discuss the theory and practice of painting, some of them include discussions on how to become a painter, the diversity and the impact of a chitra on viewers, of aesthetics, how the art of painting relates to other arts (kala), methods of preparing the canvas or wall, methods and recipes to make color pigments. For example, the 10th-century Chitra Kaladruma presents recipe for making red color paint from the resin of lac insects. Other colors for the historic frescoes found in India, such as those in the Ajanta Caves, were obtained from nature. They mention earthy and mineral (inorganic) colorants such as yellow and red ochre, orpigment, green celadonite and ultramarine blue (lapis lazuli). The use of organic colorants prepared per a recipe in these texts have been confirmed through residue analysis and modern chromatographic techniques.

 

THEORY

The Indian concepts of painting are described in a range of texts called the shilpa shastras. These typically begin by attributing this art to divine sources such as Vishvakarma and ancient rishis (sages) such as Narayana and Nagnajit, weaving some mythology, highlighting chitra as a means to express ideas and beauty along with other universal aspects, then proceed to discuss the theory and practice of painting, sketching and other related arts. Manuscripts of many these texts are found in India, while some are known to be lost but are found outside India such as in Tibet and Nepal. Among these are the Citrasutras in the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana manuscripts discovered in India, and the Citralaksana manuscript discovered in Tibet (lost in India). This theory include early Indian ideas on how to prepare a canvas or substrate, measurement, proportion, stance, color, shade, projection, the painting's interaction with light, the viewer, how to captivate the mind, and other ideas.

 

According to the historic Indian tradition, a successful and impactful painting and painter requires a knowledge of the subject – either mythology or real life, as well as a keen sense of observation and knowledge of nature, human behavior, dance, music, song and other arts. For example, section 3.2 of Visnudharmottara Purana discusses these requirements and the contextual knowledge needed in chitra and the artist who produces it. The Chitrasutras in the Vishnudharmottara Purana state that the sculpture and painting arts are related, with the phrase "as in Natya, so in Citra". This relationship links them in rasa (aesthetics) and as forms of expression.

 

THE PAINTING

A chitra is a form of expression and communication. According to Aparajitaprccha – a 12th-century text on arts and architecture, just like the water reflects the moon, a chitra reflects the world. It is a rupa (form) of how the painter sees or what the painter wants the viewer to observe or feel or experience.

 

A good painting is one that is alive, breathing, draws in and affects the viewer. It captivates the minds of viewers, despite their diversity. Installed in a sala (hall or room), it enlivens the space.

 

The ornaments of a painting are its lines, shading, decoration and colors, states the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana. It states that there are eight gunas (merits, features) of a chitra that the artist must focus on: posture; proportion; the use of the plumb line; charm; detail (how much and where); verisimilitude; kshaya (loss, foreshortening) and; vrddhi (gain). Among the dosas (demerits, faults) of a painting and related arts, states Chitrasutra, are lines that are weak or thick, absence of variety, errors in scale (oversized eyes, lips, cheeks), inconsistency across the canvas, deviations from the rules of proportion, improper posture or sentiment, and non-merging of colors.

 

LIMBS OF THE PAINTING

Two historical sets called "chitra anga", or "limbs of painting" are found in Indian texts. According to the Samarangana Sutradhara – an 11th-century Sanskrit text on Hindu architecture and arts, a painting has eight limbs:

 

Vartika – manufacture of brushes

Bhumibandhana – preparation of base, plaster, canvas

Rekhakarma – sketching

Varnakarma – coloring

Vartanakarma – shading

lekhakarana – outlining

Dvikakarma – second and final lining

Lepyakarma – final coating

 

According to Yashodhara's Jayamangala, a Sanskrit commentary on Kamasutra, there are sadanga (six limbs)[note 5] in the art of alekhyam and chitra (drawing and painting):

 

Rupa-bhedah, or form distinction; this requires a knowledge of characteristic marks, diversity, manifested forms that distinguish states of something in the same genus/class

Pramanani, or measure; requires knowledge of measurement and proportion rules (talamana)

Bhava yojanam, or emotion and its joining with other parts of the painting; requires understanding and representing the mood of the subject

Lavanya yojanam, or rasa, charm; requires understanding and representing the inner qualities of the subject

Sadrsyam, or resemblance; requires knowledge of visual correspondence across the canvas

Varnika-bhanga or color-pigment-analysis; requires knowledge how colors distribute on the canvas and how they visually impact the viewer.

 

These six limbs are arranged stylistically in two ways. First as a set of compound (Rupa-bhedah and Varnika-bhanda), a set of joining (middle two yojnam), and a set of single words (Pramanani and Sadrsyam). Second, states Victor Mair, the six limbs in this Hindu text are paired in a set of differentiation skills (first two), then a pair of aesthetic skills, and finally a pair of technical skills. These limbs parallel the 12th-century Six principles of Chinese painting of Xie He. {refn|group=note|The Hua Chi of Teng Ch'un, a 12th-century Chinese text, mentions the Buddhist temple of Nalanda with frescoes about the Buddha painted inside. It states that the Indian Buddhas look different from those painted by Chinese, as the Indian paintings have Buddha with larger eyes, their ears are curiously stretched and the Buddhas have their right shoulder bare. It then states that the artists first make a drawing of the picture, then paint a vermilion or gold colored base. It also mentions the use of ox-glue and a gum produced from peach trees and willow juice, with the artists preferring the latter. According to Coomaraswamy, the ox-glue in the Indian context mentioned in the Chinese text is probably the same as the recipe found in the Sanskrit text Silparatna, one where the base medium is produced from boiling buffalo skin in milk, followed by drying and blending process.

 

The six limbs in Jayamangala likely reflect the earliest and more established Hindu tradition for chitra. This is supported by the Chitrasutras found in the Vishnudharmottara Purana. They explicitly mention pramanani and lavanya as key elements of a painting, as well as discuss the other four of the six limbs in other sutras. The Chitrasutra chapters are likely from about the 4th or 5th-century. Numerous other Indian texts touch upon the elements or aspects of a chitra. For example, the Aparajitaprccha states that the essential elements of a painting are: citrabhumi (background), the rekha (lines, sketch), the varna (color), the vartana (shading), the bhusana (decoration) and the rasa (aesthetic experience).

 

THE PAINTER

The painter (chitrakara, rupakara) must master the fundamentals of measurement and proportions, state the historic chitra texts of India. According to these historic texts, the expert painter masters the skills in measurement, characteristics of subjects, attributes, form, relative proportion, ornament and beauty, states Isabella Nardi – a scholar known for her studies on chitra text and traditions of India. According to the Chitrasutras, a skilled painter needs practice, and is one who is able to paint neck, hands, feet, ears of living beings without ornamentation, as well as paint water waves, flames, smoke, and garments as they get affected by the speed of wind. He paints all types of scenes, ranging from dharma, artha and kama. A painter observes, then remembers, repeating this process till his memory has all the details he needs to paint, states Silparatna. According to Sivatattva Ratnakara, he is well versed in sketching, astute with measurements, skilled in outlining (hastalekha), competent with colors, and ready to diligently mix and combine colors to create his chitra. The painter is a creative person, with an inner sense of rasa (aesthetics).

 

THE VIEWER

The painter should consider the diversity of viewers, states the Indian tradition of chitra. The experts and critics with much experience with paintings study the lines, shading and aesthetics, the uninitiated visitors and children enjoy the vibrancy of colors, while women tend to be attracted to the ornamentation of form and the emotions. A successful painter tends to captivate a variety of minds. A painter should remember that the visual and aesthetic impact of a painting triggers different responses in different audiences.

 

The Silparatna – a Sanskrit text on the arts, states that the painting should reflect its intended place and purpose. A theme suitable for a palace or gateway is different from that in a temple or the walls of a home. Scenes of wars, misery, death and suffering are not suitable paintings within homes, but these can be important in a chitrasala (museum with paintings). Auspicious paintings with beautiful colors such as those that cheer and enliven a room are better for homes, states Silparatna.

 

PRACITICE

According to the art historian Percy Brown, the painting tradition in India is ancient and the persuasive evidence are the oldest known murals at the Jogimara caves. The mention of chitra and related terms in the pre-Buddhist Vedic era texts, the chitra tradition is much older. It is very likely, states Brown, the pre-Buddhist structures had paintings in them. However, the primary building material in ancient India was wood, the colors were organic materials and natural pigments, which when combined with the tropical weather in India would naturally cause the painting to fade, damage and degrade over the centuries. It is not surprising, therefore, that sample paintings and historic evidence for chitra practice are unusual. The few notable surviving examples of chitra are found hidden in caves, where they would be naturally preserved a bit better, longer and would be somewhat protected from the destructive effects of wind, dust, water and biological processes.

Some notable, major surviving examples of historic paintings include:

 

Murals at Jogimara cave (eight panels of murals, with a Brahmi inscription, 2nd or 1st century BCE, Hindu), oldest known ceiling paintings in India in remote Ramgarh hills of northern Chhattisgarh, below on wall of this cave is a Brahmi inscription in Magadhi language about a girl named Devadasi and a boy named Devadina (either they were lovers and wrote a love-graffiti per one translation, or they were partners who together converted natural caves here into a theatre with painted walls per another translation)

 

Mural at Sitabhinji Group of Rock Shelters (c. 400 CE Ravanachhaya mural with an inscription, near a Shiva temple in remote Odisha, a non-religious painting), the oldest surviving example of a tempera painting in eastern states of India

 

Murals at Ajanta caves (Jataka tales, Buddhist), 5th-century CE, Maharashtra

Murals at Badami Cave Temples (Hindu), 6th-century CE, Karnataka (secular paintings along with one of the earliest known painting of a Hindu legend about Shiva and Parvati inside a Vaishnava cave)

Murals at Bagh caves (Hallisalasya dance, Buddhist or Hindu), Madhya Pradesh

Murals at Ellora caves (Flying vidyadharas, Jain), Maharashtra

Frescoes at Sittanavasal cave (Nature scenes likely representing places of Tirthankara sermons, Jain), Tamil Nadu

Frescoes at Thirunadhikkara cave temple (Flowers and a woman, likely a scene of puja offering to Ganesha, another of Vishnu, Hindu), Travancore region, Kerala-Tamil Nadu

Paintings at the Brihadisvara temple (Dancer, Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Manuscript paintings (numerous states such as Gujarat, Kashmir, Kerala, Odisha, Assam; also Nepal, Tibet; Buddhist, Jain, Hindu

Vijayanagara temples (Hindu), Karnataka

Chidambaram temple (Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Chitrachavadi (Hindu, a choultry–mandapa near Madurai with Ramayana frescoes)

Pahari paintings (Hindu), Himachal Pradesh and nearby regions

Rajput paintings (Hindu), Rajasthan

Deccan paintings (Hindu, Jain)

Kerala paintings (Hindu)

Telangana paintings (Hindu)

Mughal paintings (Indo-Islamic)

 

CONTEMPORARY CULTURE

Kalamkari (Hindu)

Pattas (Jain, Hindu)

 

WIKIPEDIA

Originally published in 1966 in hardcover and reprinted in 1989. There has likely been no other attempts to state so plainly though in rather obtuse academic language the underpinnings of how human society constructs reality for the humans within said society. To attempt such a description today would be to garner a thousand cuts from the aperspective post modernists and their progeny of which I will say no more.

 

The two men attempting this project straddle two different academic disciplines and two cultures between them. One Peter L. Berger a professor and director of the Institute for the Study of Economic Culture at Boston University while the other Thomas Luckmann a professor of Sociology at the University of Konstanz in West Germany at the time of writing this book. Neither reveal any personal information within the book itself, but as the treatise unfolds a droll sense of humor is apparent in the cultural examples given i.e. a trio consisting of a man, a woman and a Lesbian and the mythology they might create in order to enjoy the fruits in the proclivities available to them.

 

The premise of the book is that reality is constructed through the use of language and stored in bodies of knowledge. The objectification of articles in the environment help to construct everyday reality. Language possesses an inherent quality of reciprocity which allows it to create reality in real time. Language constructs symbolic representations far beyond reality. Symbols and signs can detach language from everyday reality and come back to inform it. Semantic fields determine what will be preserved of societal interactions which is passed on from generation to generation. This social stock of knowledge creates society.

 

Because humans are born before they are fully able to fend for themselves in the wild, society has derived a social order among individuals to provide stability to create the activities that will further socialize babies and children to operate as adults. This is the fascinating thing about humans as a biological organism and a species. The length of time that spans of nearly two decades that it takes to socialize humans has allowed for enormous diversity in how this is achieved as shown in the many cultures that encompass the planet. Our current era seems to have forgotten how crucial this socialization of the young is to their own well being especially as they approach the cusp of adulthood given how we have so easily been persuaded to hand over these young minds first to television and now to the smart phone and with it the internet, the ready portal to porn and caches of information to bolster any belief whatsoever.

 

The authors continue to posit that reality exists only as individuals are conscious of it. Yet this individual consciousness is socially determined. Thus the individual consciousness is simultaneously shaped by the society it is simmering in. Any bi and tricultural person can attest to that fact from their own sampling of more than one culture.

 

In society, reality is maintained by institutions where the collected bodies of knowledge are stored. The institution is real only in so far as it is realized by those executing these societal realities in performed roles. Through these roles their characters are defined from which they also derive their objective sense. And language is the medium by which logic ensues and legitimates this socially constructed reality. These are the tools we are given to defend and create our reality within a given society. So we are walking talking maintainers of reality with varying degrees of authority and power given to us by these established institutions. We also internalize this knowledge and the accompanying reality and participate in rituals of tradition to cement the reality into history.

 

In this ongoing battle to maintain a society we have psychologists to reign in the deviants. This sociological view of psychologists and their created realities in terms of diagnosis is particularly potent. For it is in the construction of individual identities that psychologists get to manage those whose proclivities don’t quite match up with the internalized societal expectations. While sociologists comment on the big picture. A picture often being suppressed by political interests.

 

The authors urged society to further study these reality making forces, but in the long run the territory covered by sociologists seems to have been overshadowed by the rise of psychologists and the ever increasing number of diagnosis that is theirs to treat. The big picture view of how society creates reality may have gone underground picked up as my teacher said by the conservative Right while being completely ignored by the identity obsessed Left.

 

As a final note the authors remind us that humans may attempt to create some pretty far fetched social realities, but all such realities will face the limitations of the human body faced as it is with such needs as hunger and sexual reproduction. And as the Buddhist like to remind us — old age, sickness and death.

 

I found the book to be a much needed reminder of the power of words and ideas to create reality. It gave me the necessary psychological distance to observe this phenomenon as it is happening now. And not be sucked in by the insistence of individuals that certain thoughts are innate or proven by science. It confirmed for me my original instincts about how culture is created to control individual thoughts and beliefs. And how those beliefs are not necessarily either correct or permanent.

 

Chitra, also spelled as Citra, is an Indian genre of art that includes painting, sketch and any art form of delineation. The earliest mention of the term Chitra in the context of painting or picture is found in some of the ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism and Pali texts of Buddhism

 

NOMENCLATURE

Chitra (IAST: Citra, चित्र) is a Sanskrit word that appears in the Vedic texts such as hymns 1.71.1 and 6.65.2 of the Rigveda. There, and other texts such as Vajasaneyi Samhita, Taittiriya Samhita, Satapatha Brahmana and Tandya Brahmana, Chitra means "excellent, clear, bright, colored, anything brightly colored that strikes the eye, brilliantly ornamented, extraordinary that evokes wonder". In the Mahabharata and the Harivamsa, it means "picture, sktech, dilineation", and is presented as a genre of kala (arts). Many texts generally dated to the post-4th-century BCE period, use the term Chitra in the sense of painting, and Chitrakara as a painter. For example, the Sanskrit grammarian Panini in verse 3.2.21 of his Astadhyayi highlights the word chitrakara in this sense. Halls and public spaces to display paintings are called chitrasalas, and the earliest known mention of these are found in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

 

A few Indian regional texts such as Kasyapa silpa refer to painting by others words. For example, abhasa – which literally means "semblance, shining forth", is used in Kasyapa-shilpa to mean as a broader category of painting, of which chitra is one of three types. The verses in section 4.4 of the Kasyapa-silpa state that there are three types of images – those which are immovable (walls, floor, terracota, stucco), movable, and those which are both movable-immovable (stone, wood, gems).[5] In each of these three, states Kasyapa-shipa, are three classes of expression – ardhacitra, citra, and citra-abhasa. Ardhacitra is an art form where a high relief is combined with painting and parts of the body is not seen (it appears to be emerging out of the canvas). The Citra is the form of picture artwork where the whole is represented with or without integrating a relief. Citrabhasha is the form where an image is represented on a canvas or wall with colors (painting). However, states Commaraswamy, the word Abhasa has other meanings depending on the context. For example, in Hindu texts on philosophy, it implies the "field of objective experience" in the sense of the intellectual image internalized by a person during a reading of a subject (such as an epic, tale or fiction), or one during a meditative spiritual experience.

 

In some Buddhist and Hindu texts on methods to prepare a manuscript (palm leaf) or a composition on a cloth, the terms lekhya and alekhya are also used in the context of a chitra. More specifically, alekhya is the space left while writing a manuscript leaf or cloth, where the artist aims to add a picture or painting to illustrate the text.

 

HISTORY

The earliest explicit reference to painting in an Indian text is found in verse 4.2 of the Maitri Upanishad where it uses the phrase citrabhittir or "like a painted wall". The Indian art of painting is also mention in a number of Buddhist Pali suttas, but with the modified spelling of Citta. This term is found in the context of either a painting, or painter, or painted-hall (citta-gara) in Majjhima Nikaya 1.127, Samyutta Nikaya 2.101 and 3.152, Vinaya 4.289 and others. Among the Jain texts, it is mentioned in Book 2 of the Acaranga Sutra as it explains that Jaina monk should not indulge in the pleasures of watching a painting.

 

The Kamasutra, broadly accepted to have been complete by about the 4th-century CE, recommends that the young man should surprise the girl he courts with gifts of color boxes and painted scrolls. The Viddhasalabhanjika – another Hindu kama- and kavya–text uses chitra-simile in verse 1.16, as "pictures painted by the god of love, with the brush of the mind and the canvas of the heart".

 

The nature of a chitra (painting), how the viewer's mind projects a two dimensional artwork into a three dimensional representation, is used by Asanga in Mahayana Sutralamkara – a 3rd to 5th-century Sanskrit text of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, to explain "non-existent imagination" as follows:

 

Just as in a picture painted according to rules, there are neither projections nor depressions and yet we see it in three dimensions, so in the non-existent imagination there is no phenomenal differentiation, and yet we behold it.

— Mahayana Sutralamkara 13.7, Translated in French by Sylvain Levi

 

According to Yoko Taniguchi and Michiyo Mori, the art of painting the caves at the c. 6th-century Buddhas of Bamiyan site in Afghanistan, destroyed by the Taliban Muslims in the late 1990s, were likely introduced to this region from India along with the literature on early Buddhism.

 

TEXTS

There are many important dedicated Indian treatises on chitra. Some of these are chapters within a larger encyclopedia-like text. These include:

 

Chitrasutras, chapters 35–43 within the Hindu text Vishnudharmottara Purana (the standard, and oft referred to text in the Indian tradition)

Chitralaksana of Nagnajit (a classic on classical painting, 5th-century CE or earlier making it the oldest known text on Indian painting; but the Sanskrit version has been lost, only version available is in Tibet and it states that it is a translation of a Sanskrit text)

Samarangana Sutradhara (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Aparajitaprccha (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Manasollasa (an encyclopedia, contains chapters on paintings)

Abhilashitartha chinatamani

Sivatatva ratnakara

Chitra Kaladruma

Silpa ratna

Narada silpa

Sarasvati silpa

Prajapati silpa

Kasyapa silpa

 

These and other texts on chitra not only discuss the theory and practice of painting, some of them include discussions on how to become a painter, the diversity and the impact of a chitra on viewers, of aesthetics, how the art of painting relates to other arts (kala), methods of preparing the canvas or wall, methods and recipes to make color pigments. For example, the 10th-century Chitra Kaladruma presents recipe for making red color paint from the resin of lac insects. Other colors for the historic frescoes found in India, such as those in the Ajanta Caves, were obtained from nature. They mention earthy and mineral (inorganic) colorants such as yellow and red ochre, orpigment, green celadonite and ultramarine blue (lapis lazuli). The use of organic colorants prepared per a recipe in these texts have been confirmed through residue analysis and modern chromatographic techniques.

 

THEORY

The Indian concepts of painting are described in a range of texts called the shilpa shastras. These typically begin by attributing this art to divine sources such as Vishvakarma and ancient rishis (sages) such as Narayana and Nagnajit, weaving some mythology, highlighting chitra as a means to express ideas and beauty along with other universal aspects, then proceed to discuss the theory and practice of painting, sketching and other related arts. Manuscripts of many these texts are found in India, while some are known to be lost but are found outside India such as in Tibet and Nepal. Among these are the Citrasutras in the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana manuscripts discovered in India, and the Citralaksana manuscript discovered in Tibet (lost in India). This theory include early Indian ideas on how to prepare a canvas or substrate, measurement, proportion, stance, color, shade, projection, the painting's interaction with light, the viewer, how to captivate the mind, and other ideas.

 

According to the historic Indian tradition, a successful and impactful painting and painter requires a knowledge of the subject – either mythology or real life, as well as a keen sense of observation and knowledge of nature, human behavior, dance, music, song and other arts. For example, section 3.2 of Visnudharmottara Purana discusses these requirements and the contextual knowledge needed in chitra and the artist who produces it. The Chitrasutras in the Vishnudharmottara Purana state that the sculpture and painting arts are related, with the phrase "as in Natya, so in Citra". This relationship links them in rasa (aesthetics) and as forms of expression.

 

THE PAINTING

A chitra is a form of expression and communication. According to Aparajitaprccha – a 12th-century text on arts and architecture, just like the water reflects the moon, a chitra reflects the world. It is a rupa (form) of how the painter sees or what the painter wants the viewer to observe or feel or experience.

 

A good painting is one that is alive, breathing, draws in and affects the viewer. It captivates the minds of viewers, despite their diversity. Installed in a sala (hall or room), it enlivens the space.

 

The ornaments of a painting are its lines, shading, decoration and colors, states the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana. It states that there are eight gunas (merits, features) of a chitra that the artist must focus on: posture; proportion; the use of the plumb line; charm; detail (how much and where); verisimilitude; kshaya (loss, foreshortening) and; vrddhi (gain). Among the dosas (demerits, faults) of a painting and related arts, states Chitrasutra, are lines that are weak or thick, absence of variety, errors in scale (oversized eyes, lips, cheeks), inconsistency across the canvas, deviations from the rules of proportion, improper posture or sentiment, and non-merging of colors.

 

LIMBS OF THE PAINTING

Two historical sets called "chitra anga", or "limbs of painting" are found in Indian texts. According to the Samarangana Sutradhara – an 11th-century Sanskrit text on Hindu architecture and arts, a painting has eight limbs:

 

Vartika – manufacture of brushes

Bhumibandhana – preparation of base, plaster, canvas

Rekhakarma – sketching

Varnakarma – coloring

Vartanakarma – shading

lekhakarana – outlining

Dvikakarma – second and final lining

Lepyakarma – final coating

 

According to Yashodhara's Jayamangala, a Sanskrit commentary on Kamasutra, there are sadanga (six limbs)[note 5] in the art of alekhyam and chitra (drawing and painting):

 

Rupa-bhedah, or form distinction; this requires a knowledge of characteristic marks, diversity, manifested forms that distinguish states of something in the same genus/class

Pramanani, or measure; requires knowledge of measurement and proportion rules (talamana)

Bhava yojanam, or emotion and its joining with other parts of the painting; requires understanding and representing the mood of the subject

Lavanya yojanam, or rasa, charm; requires understanding and representing the inner qualities of the subject

Sadrsyam, or resemblance; requires knowledge of visual correspondence across the canvas

Varnika-bhanga or color-pigment-analysis; requires knowledge how colors distribute on the canvas and how they visually impact the viewer.

 

These six limbs are arranged stylistically in two ways. First as a set of compound (Rupa-bhedah and Varnika-bhanda), a set of joining (middle two yojnam), and a set of single words (Pramanani and Sadrsyam). Second, states Victor Mair, the six limbs in this Hindu text are paired in a set of differentiation skills (first two), then a pair of aesthetic skills, and finally a pair of technical skills. These limbs parallel the 12th-century Six principles of Chinese painting of Xie He. {refn|group=note|The Hua Chi of Teng Ch'un, a 12th-century Chinese text, mentions the Buddhist temple of Nalanda with frescoes about the Buddha painted inside. It states that the Indian Buddhas look different from those painted by Chinese, as the Indian paintings have Buddha with larger eyes, their ears are curiously stretched and the Buddhas have their right shoulder bare. It then states that the artists first make a drawing of the picture, then paint a vermilion or gold colored base. It also mentions the use of ox-glue and a gum produced from peach trees and willow juice, with the artists preferring the latter. According to Coomaraswamy, the ox-glue in the Indian context mentioned in the Chinese text is probably the same as the recipe found in the Sanskrit text Silparatna, one where the base medium is produced from boiling buffalo skin in milk, followed by drying and blending process.

 

The six limbs in Jayamangala likely reflect the earliest and more established Hindu tradition for chitra. This is supported by the Chitrasutras found in the Vishnudharmottara Purana. They explicitly mention pramanani and lavanya as key elements of a painting, as well as discuss the other four of the six limbs in other sutras. The Chitrasutra chapters are likely from about the 4th or 5th-century. Numerous other Indian texts touch upon the elements or aspects of a chitra. For example, the Aparajitaprccha states that the essential elements of a painting are: citrabhumi (background), the rekha (lines, sketch), the varna (color), the vartana (shading), the bhusana (decoration) and the rasa (aesthetic experience).

 

THE PAINTER

The painter (chitrakara, rupakara) must master the fundamentals of measurement and proportions, state the historic chitra texts of India. According to these historic texts, the expert painter masters the skills in measurement, characteristics of subjects, attributes, form, relative proportion, ornament and beauty, states Isabella Nardi – a scholar known for her studies on chitra text and traditions of India. According to the Chitrasutras, a skilled painter needs practice, and is one who is able to paint neck, hands, feet, ears of living beings without ornamentation, as well as paint water waves, flames, smoke, and garments as they get affected by the speed of wind. He paints all types of scenes, ranging from dharma, artha and kama. A painter observes, then remembers, repeating this process till his memory has all the details he needs to paint, states Silparatna. According to Sivatattva Ratnakara, he is well versed in sketching, astute with measurements, skilled in outlining (hastalekha), competent with colors, and ready to diligently mix and combine colors to create his chitra. The painter is a creative person, with an inner sense of rasa (aesthetics).

 

THE VIEWER

The painter should consider the diversity of viewers, states the Indian tradition of chitra. The experts and critics with much experience with paintings study the lines, shading and aesthetics, the uninitiated visitors and children enjoy the vibrancy of colors, while women tend to be attracted to the ornamentation of form and the emotions. A successful painter tends to captivate a variety of minds. A painter should remember that the visual and aesthetic impact of a painting triggers different responses in different audiences.

 

The Silparatna – a Sanskrit text on the arts, states that the painting should reflect its intended place and purpose. A theme suitable for a palace or gateway is different from that in a temple or the walls of a home. Scenes of wars, misery, death and suffering are not suitable paintings within homes, but these can be important in a chitrasala (museum with paintings). Auspicious paintings with beautiful colors such as those that cheer and enliven a room are better for homes, states Silparatna.

 

PRACITICE

According to the art historian Percy Brown, the painting tradition in India is ancient and the persuasive evidence are the oldest known murals at the Jogimara caves. The mention of chitra and related terms in the pre-Buddhist Vedic era texts, the chitra tradition is much older. It is very likely, states Brown, the pre-Buddhist structures had paintings in them. However, the primary building material in ancient India was wood, the colors were organic materials and natural pigments, which when combined with the tropical weather in India would naturally cause the painting to fade, damage and degrade over the centuries. It is not surprising, therefore, that sample paintings and historic evidence for chitra practice are unusual. The few notable surviving examples of chitra are found hidden in caves, where they would be naturally preserved a bit better, longer and would be somewhat protected from the destructive effects of wind, dust, water and biological processes.

Some notable, major surviving examples of historic paintings include:

 

Murals at Jogimara cave (eight panels of murals, with a Brahmi inscription, 2nd or 1st century BCE, Hindu), oldest known ceiling paintings in India in remote Ramgarh hills of northern Chhattisgarh, below on wall of this cave is a Brahmi inscription in Magadhi language about a girl named Devadasi and a boy named Devadina (either they were lovers and wrote a love-graffiti per one translation, or they were partners who together converted natural caves here into a theatre with painted walls per another translation)

 

Mural at Sitabhinji Group of Rock Shelters (c. 400 CE Ravanachhaya mural with an inscription, near a Shiva temple in remote Odisha, a non-religious painting), the oldest surviving example of a tempera painting in eastern states of India

 

Murals at Ajanta caves (Jataka tales, Buddhist), 5th-century CE, Maharashtra

Murals at Badami Cave Temples (Hindu), 6th-century CE, Karnataka (secular paintings along with one of the earliest known painting of a Hindu legend about Shiva and Parvati inside a Vaishnava cave)

Murals at Bagh caves (Hallisalasya dance, Buddhist or Hindu), Madhya Pradesh

Murals at Ellora caves (Flying vidyadharas, Jain), Maharashtra

Frescoes at Sittanavasal cave (Nature scenes likely representing places of Tirthankara sermons, Jain), Tamil Nadu

Frescoes at Thirunadhikkara cave temple (Flowers and a woman, likely a scene of puja offering to Ganesha, another of Vishnu, Hindu), Travancore region, Kerala-Tamil Nadu

Paintings at the Brihadisvara temple (Dancer, Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Manuscript paintings (numerous states such as Gujarat, Kashmir, Kerala, Odisha, Assam; also Nepal, Tibet; Buddhist, Jain, Hindu

Vijayanagara temples (Hindu), Karnataka

Chidambaram temple (Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Chitrachavadi (Hindu, a choultry–mandapa near Madurai with Ramayana frescoes)

Pahari paintings (Hindu), Himachal Pradesh and nearby regions

Rajput paintings (Hindu), Rajasthan

Deccan paintings (Hindu, Jain)

Kerala paintings (Hindu)

Telangana paintings (Hindu)

Mughal paintings (Indo-Islamic)

 

CONTEMPORARY CULTURE

Kalamkari (Hindu)

Pattas (Jain, Hindu)

 

WIKIPEDIA

ROMA ARCHEOLOGICA & RESTAURO ARCHITETTURA 2020. «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. The NYT (18 Aug. 2020) & Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (13 Apr. 2020). S.v., "Raffaello architetto", in: The NYT (06 March 2020); Università di Padova (20/07/2020); Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020); Jhon Correa / Facebook (1 July 2020) & Prof. Cammy Brothers (2001). wp.me/pbMWvy-uQ

 

1). ROME - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. Scuderie del Quirinale (5 March - June 2020).

 

A monographic exhibition with over two hundred masterpieces among paintings, drawings and comparative works, dedicated to Raffaello on the 500th anniversary of his death, which took place in Rome on April 6, 1520 at the age of just 37 years old.

 

The exhibition, which finds inspiration particularly in the Raffaello's fundamental Roman period which consecrated him as an artist of incomparable and legendary greatness, tells his whole complex and articulated creative path with richness of detail through a vast corpus of works, for the first time exposed all together.

 

Many institutions involved have contributed to enrich the exhibition with masterpieces from their collections: among these, in Italy, the National Galleries of Ancient Art, the National Art Gallery of Bologna, the Museum and the Real Bosco di Capodimonte, the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, the Brescia Museums Foundation, and abroad, in addition to the Vatican Museums, the Louvre, the National Gallery of London, the Prado Museum, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Albertina in Vienna, the British Museum, the Royal Collection, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lille.

 

Fonte / source:

--- Scuderie del Quirinale (5 March - June 2020).

www.scuderiequirinale.it/mostra/copia-di-raffaello

 

2.1). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483», in: Intervento delle Scuderie del Quirinale per la maratona del MiBACT "Italia chiamò" / Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (Mar 13, 2020).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8l6q9ywLxY&t=112s

 

2.2). ROME - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. / English / Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (Apr. 13, 2020). www.youtube.com/watch?v=s58gYvvNrKQ&t=61s

 

3). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. Scuderie del Quirinale (05/03 - 02/06/2020).

 

Il 6 aprile 1520 muore a Roma, a trentasette anni, Raffaello Sanzio, il più grande pittore del Rinascimento. La città sembra fermarsi nella commozione e nel rimpianto, mentre la notizia della scomparsa si diffonde con incredibile rapidità in tutte le corti europee. S’interrompeva non solo un percorso artistico senza precedenti, ma anche l’ambizioso progetto di ricostruzione grafica della Roma antica, commissionato dal pontefice, che avrebbe riscattato dopo secoli di oblio e rovina la grandezza e la nobiltà della capitale dei Cesari, affermando inoltre una nuova idea di tutela. Sepolto secondo le sue ultime volontà nel Pantheon, simbolo della continuità fra diverse tradizioni di culto, forse l’esempio più emblematico dell’architettura classica, Raffaello diviene immediatamente oggetto di un processo di divinizzazione, mai veramente interrotto, che ci consegna oggi la perfezione e l’armonia della sua arte.

A distanza di cinquecento anni, questa mostra racconta la sua storia e insieme quella di tutta la cultura figurativa occidentale che l’ha considerato un modello imprescindibile. La mostra, articolata secondo un’idea originale, propone un percorso che ripercorre a ritroso l’avventura creativa di Raffaello, da Roma a Firenze, da Firenze all’Umbria, fino alla nativa Urbino. Un incalzante flash-back che consente di ripensare il percorso biografico partendo dalla sua massima espansione creativa negli anni di Leone X. Risalendo il corso della vita di Raffaello di capolavoro in capolavoro, il visitatore potrà rintracciare in filigrana la prefigurazione di quel linguaggio classico che solo a Roma, assimilata nel profondo la lezione dell’antico, si sviluppò con una pienezza che non ha precedenti nella storia dell’arte. Grazie ad un numero eccezionale di capolavori provenienti dalle maggiori raccolte italiane ed europee, la mostra organizzata dalle Scuderie del Quirinale insieme con le Gallerie degli Uffizi, costituisce un’occasione ineguagliabile per osservare da vicino le invenzioni dell’Urbinate. Il suo breve, luminoso percorso ha cambiato per sempre la storia delle arti e del gusto: Raffaello rivive nelle sale dell’esposizione che lo celebra come genio universale.

 

Fonte / source:

--- Scuderie del Quirinale (05/03 - 02/06/2020).

www.scuderiequirinale.it/mostra/raffaello-000

 

3). ROME «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. The NYT (18 Aug. 2020).

 

ROME - In the Virtual (and Actual) Footsteps of Raphael - In Italy and beyond, the plan was to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Renaissance artist’s death with great fanfare. Then came the pandemic, and the virtual world stepped in. The NYT (18 Aug. 2020).

 

______

Also see:

 

--- ROME - Rome Celebrates the Short, but Beautiful, Life of Raphael - Amid new coronavirus restrictions on museums in Italy, a blockbuster show traces the artistʼs life from finish to start. The NYT (06 March 2020).

www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/arts/raphael-rome-coronavirus....

______

 

This was supposed to be the year of Raphael. Five hundred years after his death at 37, the Renaissance master was due to receive the exalted rollout reserved for artistic superstars: blockbuster museum shows in Rome and London; conferences and lectures at universities and cultural centers around the world; flag-waving and wreath-laying in his Italian hometown, Urbino. There was even the tang of controversy when the advisory committee of Florence’s Uffizi Gallery resigned en masse to protest the inclusion of a precious papal portrait in the big exhibition at Rome’s Scuderie del Quirinale. Then the coronavirus hit and Raphael’s annus mirabilis turned into the world’s annus horribilis.

 

When news of the handsome young artist’s death broke in Rome on April 6, 1520, Pope Leo X wept and church bells tolled all over the city.

Half a millennium later, Rome was in lockdown along with the rest of Italy as deaths from the virus spiraled. The Scuderie show, a once-in-a-lifetime gathering of more than 200 works (120 by Raphael) from all over the world, was forced to shut its doors after just three days, despite having presold a record 70,000 tickets. Raphael’s tomb in the Pantheon was supposed to be adorned with a red rose every day of 2020 to commemorate his death — but the ancient temple was also shuttered because of the virus. Lectures and conferences were canceled, postponed or moved online.

 

Poor Raphael. Last year, the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death came off without a hitch. Raphael’s devotees hoped that this

year’s celebrations would restore the artist’s luster, which has dimmed over the past centuries. When the world fell ill this past winter,

Raphael was one of the casualties. But all is not lost. The Scuderie show reopened on June 2 and will remain up until the end of August. The Scuderie’s president, Mario de Simoni, had expected as many as 500,000 people to see the show pre-virus, but now says the number probably won’t exceed 160,000. For those unable to attend in person, the Scuderie has released an English-language version of its excellent video, recapping the highlights of the exhibition, room by room. You’ll want to hit the pause button in Room 2 to admire two masterpieces on loan from the Louvre: a selfportrait with a friend and the portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, one of the glories of Renaissance portraiture. The close-ups of his paintings of women in Room 6 testify to the artist’s passionate appreciation of feminine beauty. Other Scuderie videos (in Italian) delve into particular aspects of his genius — for instance, the jewelry worn by his female subjects, or the literary world he moved in.

Tour guides such as Clam Tours and Joy of Rome now offer virtual journeys in which small groups can zoom around Italy in the footsteps of the artist. On Sept. 13, for example, you can join the Renaissance specialist Antonio Forcellino and other Italian art experts on Clam Tour’s virtual exploration of Raphael’s incomparable frescoes of the four sibyls at Rome’s Santa Maria della Pace church ($25). Check out Joy of Rome’s free two-minute video about Raphael’s frescoes at the Villa Farnesina to see if you’d like to sign up for a two-and-a-half hour virtual tour (prices on request).

 

Even on a laptop screen, Raphael’s ever-evolving craftsmanship and quicksilver brilliance are apparent. “The year of Raphael has not

been ruined, but simply modified,” said Marzia Faietti, a curator of the Scuderie show. “Since many conferences and lectures have been

put off until next year, in a sense there will be two years of Raphael.”

 

For Italians, a silver lining of the pandemic has been the opportunity to relish their cultural treasures without the tourist hordes. “I cried,”

said Francesca Pagliaro, founder of the Joy of Rome tour company, of the experience of standing alone in the Vatican’s recently reopened

Sala di Costantino — one of four rooms in the museum frescoed by Raphael and his students, and which you can view here. “It’s the first

time in five years that I’ve seen the Stanze without scaffolding — and I had it to myself,” Ms. Pagliaro said. “It was magical.” Americans, barred from European travel for the foreseeable future, will have to make do with all this virtual magic. Not ideal — but Raphael’s magic is powerful, subtle and enduring enough to withstand the challenge.

 

The spirit of Urbino

I can attest to this because back in November 2019, I had the opportunity to follow in Raphael’s actual, not virtual, footsteps in Italy. I stood

shivering in the room where he was born in Urbino in 1483. I knelt at the austere tomb in a niche inside the Pantheon where he was

interred 37 years later. I feasted my eyes not only on paintings and frescoes, but on the humble church and glorious Roman chapel that

attest to his emerging genius for architecture. My pilgrimage would be impossible today — but thanks to the wonders of the internet and

the resourcefulness of Italy’s leading cultural institutions, I can remotely retrace my steps, refresh my memories and relive the

revelations.

 

The first revelation came, aptly, in Urbino’s Palazzo Ducale, the magnificent Renaissance palace constructed in the late 15th century by the

humanist and warlord Federico da Montefeltro that now houses the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche. Judge the magnificence for yourself

by clicking through Google Images’ impressive photo archive. Another click puts you face to face with the museum’s sole work by Raphael

— the haunting portrait known as “La Muta” (“The Mute Woman”). As in so many of his portraits, Raphael posed this stern beauty against a solid dark background, eschewing any visual cues that would evoke a sense of place.

 

How, I wondered, did Urbino influence the art of its most famous son?

 

I posed this question to Peter Aufreiter, then director of the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, when I sat down with him in his office in the

Palazzo Ducale. Mr. Aufreiter’s response was to click on an image of Raphael’s 1507 portrait of Federico’s son, Duke Guidobaldo da

Montefeltro (now in the Uffizi), and then summon me to the window. “Look at the hillside across the valley and that house at the base of

the hill — it’s the same background Raphael put in his painting of Guidobaldo.” You can see exactly what Mr. Aufreiter meant by using the

magnify feature on this online image. Urbino’s steep green landscape, limpid light and crystalline architecture — you can also get a good sense of it here — imprinted themselves on the artist’s young mind and surface repeatedly in his work.

 

Even though Raphael spent most of his career in Florence and Rome, Mr. Aufreiter insists that Urbino, whose cityscape has changed little

since the Renaissance, is where you can feel his spirit most intensely.

 

The spirit is palpable in the artisans’ quarter surrounding the house where Raphael was born, the son of the local court painter Giovanni

Santi. Near the summit of the ski-slope-pitched Via Raffaello, just a stone’s throw from the rather pompous bronze monument of the artist

erected in 1897, the Casa Natale di Raffaello has been preserved as a museum. There’s a rather rudimentary virtual tour on its website, but

you’ll get a better feel for the interior and exterior spaces in this YouTube video. In these bare simple rooms and the deep brick courtyard

they enclose, little imagination is required to dial the scene back to Raphael’s apprenticeship in the last years of the 15th century. Giovanni

Santi’s bottega (workshop) occupied the ground floor, and the future master grew up amid the bustle of painters grinding pigments,

dabbing madonnas and trading in art supplies.

 

Father and son conducted a more exalted commerce at Urbino’s Palazzo Ducale. Fabricated of brick, stone and flawless geometry, this

palace was one of the glories of the Italian Renaissance — not only for its divine architecture, but for the refined elegance of the nobles

who gathered here. This video captures some facets of the palace’s perfection — the way its silhouette pierces the profile of surrounding

hills, the ideal proportions of its noble courtyard, the interplay of volume and decoration in its interior.

 

Baldassare Castiglione set his 1528 masterpiece, “The Book of the Courtier,” in this storied palace — and it was here that the young

Raphael polished his manners, sharpened his wit, cultivated invaluable connections and acquired a lifelong passion for classical antiquity.

Raised at court, Raphael was pursued by the powerful (Popes Julius II and Leo X), esteemed by the brilliant (Castiglione and the Urbinoborn

architect Donato Bramante were close friends) and adored by the beautiful. “Raphael was a very amorous person,” wrote Giorgio Vasari, his first biographer. It was Vasari who originated the claim that Raphael died after an overindulgence in sex with his Roman mistress, Margherita Luti. Whatever really killed him on April 6, 1520, Raphael accomplished much and rose high in his brief life — but he never ceased to be “il maestro Urbinate,” the master from Urbino.

 

A couch-surfing brush-for-hire.

Orphaned when his father died in 1494 (his mother had died three years earlier), Raphael spent his teenage years as an apprentice before

undertaking commissions in Umbria and Tuscany. It’s likely that he was in Florence by 1504 — not as a permanent resident but rather a

couch-surfing brush-for-hire.

 

Though Raphael’s footsteps in Florence are faint, there is no question that he encountered the works of both Leonardo da Vinci and

Michelangelo here — including, very likely, the Mona Lisa, which you can view here, and the marble statue of David, which you can see

and read about on the Accademia’s detailed website. Critics and connoisseurs have been measuring this Renaissance trio against each other for 500 years now. Florence’s Uffizi Gallery is the ideal place to revisit this rivalry, both in person and virtually. After a recent renovation, paintings by the big three have been put on display in two beautifully lit adjoining rooms, and you can find them on the Uffizi website.

 

To my eyes, neither Michelangelo nor Leonardo ever matched the sheer painterly virtuosity of the fringed white collar that Raphael stitched around the neck of the cloth merchant Agnolo Doni, or the faint dent he incised between the young businessman’s anxious brows (use the magnify function to zoom in on this image). Agnolo’s 15-year-old bride, Maddalena Strozzi, hangs beside him, posed like the Mona Lisa with bejeweled hands clasped on her lap, but clad in a kaleidoscope of watered red silk, embroidered blue damask and shimmering gauze. Across the Arno are the glories of the Pitti Palace’s Galleria Palatina — the largest collection of Raphael’s works outside the Vatican. Unlike the Uffizi, the Pitti Palace retains the ambience and layout of an aristocratic residence: Paintings are stacked three deep in gilded high-ceilinged chambers; works are arranged idiosyncratically rather than chronologically; and the lighting can be maddeningly inadequate. Luckily for remote visitors, the lighting is much better on the palace’s website, as well as in the Italian and Spanish language videos about the museum’s treasures, posted here.

 

To the Eternal City

Raphael was summoned to Rome in 1508 by Pope Julius II, and he remained there until his death in 1520. Those 12 final years in the

Eternal City marked the apogee of his career. Painter, architect, entrepreneur, archaeologist, pioneer printmaker, Raphael became the

prototype of the artist as celebrity — the Andy Warhol of the Renaissance.

 

In pre-pandemic Rome, visitors had to endure the lines and tour groups that plagued the Vatican Museums in order to spend a few crowded moments with one of Raphael’s supreme accomplishments: the four papal chambers, known as the Stanze di Raffaello, that the artist and his workshop frescoed between 1508 and 1520. These days, in-person visitors to the reopened Vatican Museums enjoy the Stanze along with the nearby Sistine Chapel in ideal conditions. But remote visits can also be rewarding, thanks to the beautifully produced videos and virtual tours now available on the Vatican’s website. With the click of a mouse, you can hop back and forth between the virtual Sistine Chapel ceiling and the Raphael Stanze and decide for yourself which is the greater masterpiece.

 

“Everything he had in art, he had from me,” the curmudgeonly Michelangelo once grumbled of his younger rival. When you view their

roughly contemporaneous fresco cycles one after the other (or side by side on your computer), it’s clear that Raphael did much more than

borrow. “The School of Athens,” the most celebrated work in the Stanze, has the propulsive tension of a film paused at its climactic scene.

Cast members — a mix of classical philosophers and Renaissance savants — converse, argue, scribble, read and declaim on a sprawling,

but unified, “set” framed by classical architecture. By contrast, Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling, for all its bravura, reads like a series of

static cels.

 

After the Vatican’s Raphael Stanze, a logical next stop, whether actually or virtually, is the Villa Farnesina, with its two beguiling frescoed

loggias — “The Triumph of Galatea” in one of the loggias and “Cupid and Psyche” in the other. Despite the name, this riverside Trastevere landmark is neither a villa nor originally a Farnese property, but rather a suburban pleasure pavilion that Agostino Chigi built for himself in the early 16th century. Chigi brought in the finest artists of the day to fresco the loggias; the result is a delightful crazy quilt of mythological scenes and astrological symbols. Raphael’s “Galatea,” with her wind-whipped tresses, elegantly torqued bare torso and dolphin-powered, scallop-shell raft, has become an icon of High Renaissance grace and wit, and you can see it and other highlights in the villa’s video archive. Even if you don’t speak Italian, the short films are worth delving into for the imagery alone.

 

From painting to architecture

In the last phase of his career, Raphael increasingly turned from painting to architecture. Sadly, his major architectural achievements — the grand unfinished Villa Madama perched on a wooded hill two miles north of the Vatican, and the classically inspired Raphael loggias inside the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace — were inaccessible to the public even before the pandemic, and remain so. To get a sense of Raphael’s architectural genius, make (or click) your way to the church of Santa Maria del Popolo in the piazza of the same name at the northwest edge of the historic center. Like so many transplants, Raphael fell under the spell of the Eternal City’s classical substructure: Rome itself, its layers, its ruins and relics, its ceaseless commerce with the past, became a source of inspiration. The chapel he designed for Chigi inside the Popolo church evinces just how deeply and fruitfully Raphael internalized this inspiration. At first glance, it’s just another church chapel — tight, high, adorned with art and inlaid with precious stone. But on this site you can glimpse the almost miraculous geometry of this space — the interplay of disc and dome, the rhythm set up between the vertical pleats of the Corinthian pilasters and the elongated triangles of the twin red marble pyramids that mark the Chigis' graves. Fittingly, the artist who devoted the final years of his career to measuring, cataloging, preserving and mapping Roman antiquities, was laid to rest in the greatest classical structure to survive the ages: the Pantheon. If a trip to the physical Pantheon is not in the cards, you can drop in with Tom Hanks as your guide in this clip from the film “Angels and Demons.” As for his tomb — an easy-to-miss niche with a statue of the Virgin, modest and vague, presiding over the glassed-in coffin — you can view it here.

 

Marzia Faietti, curator of Rome’s Scuderie show, has been struck by how the virus has enhanced Raphael’s reputation and heightened

awareness of the twin beauties of his art and character. “Young people in particular have reacted with an outpouring of enthusiasm and

benevolence which I really didn’t expect,” she said. “The pandemic has brought suffering to so many, but the year of Raphael will be

remembered more vividly, not despite the virus, but because of it.”

 

Fonte / source:

--- The NYT (18 Aug. 2020).

www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/travel/in-the-virtual-and-actu...

 

Foto / fonte / source:

--- ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483», et al., Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (05/03 - 02/06/2020) (08/2020).

www.youtube.com/user/ScuderieQuirinale/videos

 

4.). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483»., in: "Raffaello architetto e la Lettera a Papa Leone X." Università di Padova (20/07/2020).

 

Artista dal talento straordinario, affermato, corteggiato, desiderato. Questo, ma non solo questo, fu Raffaello Sanzio (1483-1520): l'esperienza come architetto, lo studio e l'impegno per la tutela degli edifici antichi di Roma sono di importanza centrale nel suo percorso, a partire dalla realizzazione di opere come la Cappella Chigi e Villa Madama, fino alla stesura, insieme a Baldassarre Castiglione, della Lettera a Papa Leone X. La grande mostra Raffaello 1520-1483, allestita alle Scuderie del Quirinale di Roma, prorogata fino al 30 agosto, dedica ampio spazio alla sua appassionata attività nel campo dell'architettura.

 

"Sin dai primi anni di formazione, l'interesse di Raffaello per l'architettura, in particolare per quella del mondo antico, è fortemente presente - racconta il professor Zaggia al Bo Live - Fino a sfociare in un'opera fondamentale come Lo sposalizio della vergine, in cui compare un tempio a pianta centrale sullo sfondo che interpreta in modo molto chiaro le sperimentazioni del suo tempo in ambito architettonico. A questa sperimentazione dell'architettura sul piano della rappresentazione, segue poi, con il trasferimento di Raffaello a Roma tra il 1508 e il 1509 e l'incontro con Bramante, un interesse concreto rivolto alla costruzione e alla progettazione vera e propria. Da questo punto di vista, il rapporto che si instaura tra Raffaello e Bramante per lo studio dell'architettura antica, conservata all'interno della città, diventa fondamentale punto di partenza per un approfondimento che aprirà strade nuove all'architettura successiva. Con la morte di figure di riferimento, come Bramante appunto, Raffaello diventa la personalità più importante che opera nel campo dell'architettura all'interno dei grandi cantieri pontifici. Si apre così una stagione breve in cui le opere realizzate da Raffaello saranno numerose e importanti: alcune realmente costruite, altre solo progettate".

 

In questo contesto si inserisce la Lettera a Papa Leone X, scritta nel 1519 da Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione, il raffinato autore del Cortegiano (ai due, uniti da amicizia e stima reciproca, è dedicata una mostra al Palazzo Ducale di Urbino, dal titolo Baldassarre Castiglione e Raffaello.Volti e momenti della civiltà di corte), sul tema della tutela e dello studio degli edifici antichi. La premessa al documento è rintracciabile nei fatti avvenuti qualche anno prima: nell'estate del 1515, infatti, Leone X nomina Raffaello præfectus marmorum et lapidum omnium (dal 1514 l'Urbinate già dirigeva la fabbrica di San Pietro). La lettera dedicatoria, la cui prima edizione venne inserita all'interno delle opere di Baldassare Castiglione pubblicate a Padova nel 1733, si apre così: "Sono molti, padre santissimo, i quali misurando col loro piccolo giudizio le cose grandissime che delli romani circa l’arme, e della città di Roma circa al mirabile artificio, ai ricchi ornamenti e alla grandezza degli edifici si scrivono, quelle più presto stimano favolose che vere. Ma altrimenti a me suole avvenire; perché considerando dalle ruine, che ancor si veggono di Roma, la divinità di quegli animi antichi, non istimo fuor di ragione il credere che molte cose a noi paiono impossibili, che ad essi erano facilissime".

 

Nella prima parte Raffaello esalta la grandezza del passato, dichiara le proprie competenze in ambito architettonico e invita il pontefice a intervenire per garantire la tutela dei monumenti antichi, da salvare dal degrado. Nella seconda invece si concentra su questione più tecniche, introducendo anche la descrizione di uno strumento per la misurazione degli edifici antichi di sua invenzione: "Farassi adunque un instromento tondo e piano, come un astrolabio, il diametro del quale sarà due palmi o più o meno, come piace a chi vuole adoperarlo, e la circonferenza di questo istromento si partirà in otto parti giusti, e a ciascuna di quelle parti si porrà il nome d’uno degli otto venti, dividendola in trentadue altre parti picciole, che si chiameranno gradi [...] Con questo adunque misureremo ogni sorte di edificio, di che forma sia, o tondo o quadro o con istrani angoli e svoglimenti quanto dir si possa".

 

"L'importanza della lettera risiede nei principi enunciati all'inizio del testo, in cui Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione sostengono la necessità e l'urgenza di tutelare i monumenti antichi, per trasmetterle alle generazioni future - conclude Zaggia -. Non a caso la lettera, pubblicata alla fine del Settecento, una volta riconosciuto l'autore in Raffaello, diventa il punto di partenza per la legislazione adottata successivamente dagli Stati europei per la protezione del patrimonio artistico e culturale. Erede ultimo di questa tradizione è l'articolo 9 della nostra Costituzione".

 

Fonte/ source:

--- Università di Padova (20/07/2020).

ilbolive.unipd.it/it/news/raffaello-architetto-lettera-pa...

 

4.1). ROMA / Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020): «Raffaello 1520-1483»., "Raffaello architetto e la Lettera a Papa Leone X." S.v., Lettera a papa Leone X di Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione; in: Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020).

 

Nella galleria fotografica potrete scorrere la lettera di Raffaello e Baladassare Castiglione a papa Leone X. Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione, Lettera a papa Leone X, s.d. [1519]. Manoscritto cartaceo costituito da 6 carte di formato 220 x 290 mm circa, ripiegate a formare fascicoletto non rilegato di 24 facciate, di cui 21 scritte, 3 bianche. ASMn, Archivio Castiglioni (acquisto 2016), busta 2, n. 12.

 

Fonte / source:

--- Lettera a papa Leone X di Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione, in: Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020).

www.archiviodistatomantova.beniculturali.it/index.php?it/...

 

4.2). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. Scuderie del Quirinale (05/03 - 02/06/2020), in: Jhon Correa / Facebook (1 July 2020). www.facebook.com/jhon.correa.7549

 

4.3). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Lettera a papa Leone X di Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione. S.v.,

Prof. Cammy Brothers, “Architecture, History, Archaeology: Drawing Ancient Rome in the Letter to Leo X & in Sixteenth-Century Practice,” in Coming About…A Festschrift for John Shearman, ed. Lars R. Jones and Louisa C. Matthew. Cambridge: Harvard University Art Museums (2001): 135–40 [in PDF].

 

Fonte / source:

--- Prof. Cammy Brothers / academia.edu. (2020).

neu.academia.edu/CammyBrothers

 

a list of interests (in alphabetical order)

 

4th plateau deep spiritual, :o), a glass or two of brandy, a man with a gun on a horse, a stack of bad magazines, a web of lies, a.s.h., abdul and cleopatra, adjusting my package, all those things you’re supposed to do, an all-female backing band, animated gifs, antiquated idioms, anxiety loops, armored bulldozer rampage, artistic license, ass morning, autoenucleation, bad inventions, being a sensitive artist, being held, being poetic, big silly dogs, bin laden weed, bitterness and hate, boo boos, brevity, british accents, calling people darling, candy covered in hair, cat sneezes, caviar in a tube, charles crumb’s art, clarisse and her demons, conditional love, copy & paste, cutlery, deadpan humor, dear leader, defense mechanisms, discipline and punish, dogs wearing costumes, dry wit, ego death, ellipses, emoticons, erotic fan fiction, feeling on your booty, femininity, “flying” into a rage, fordcomic, forum girls, freedom club, frost in twilight, fuck egg, girls that smell nice, glass crystals, gloryhood, good clean fun, goon meat, groovy riffs, heh, hitting the road, hogwarsh, hopeless melancholy, hot sauce, i’m only half joking, impossible standards, innumerable kisses, internalizing disorders, internets, interracial incest, ironic interests, italian gesticulations, joe spinell’s voice, juicy internet drama, jung’s archetypes, laser vision ability, learned helplessness, lechery, libertinage, life in jail, lobve stinks, lofty pleasures, lonely hearts, long shadows, lousy excuses, low art, magic dust, maimiidance.gif, maslow’s hierarchy, melodrama, meta-irony, miltonic isolation, misery and woe, mixtapes, my one-track mind, my redemption, naiveté, niggas on skis, no funeral, nocturnal wind, nsa dome, oh word?, old bricks, oomaharumooma, outlaw poets, partridge family temple, parrot videos, partying alone, perfect miracles, pinyin, plucking a little daisy, poetic absurdity, porngrind, posting in fyad, predator’s manifesto, pressing my luck, r&b slow jams, rechargeable batteries, regression and fixation, resting on my laurels, revealing ugly truths, romantic fantasies, saying platitudes ironically, seafoam, second guessing myself, shaking in anger, ship it holla, shredded roses, sighing excessively, sleepytime, socks, songs for me, space aliens smoking pot, spelling things wrong, spouting catchphrases, standing beneath the rainy sky, staying up late, surreal aloofness, swing sets, synesthesia, tabbed browsing, table manners, tech noodling, teenage ants, terrorist chic, the crime library, the saturday boy, the so-called counterculture, there be ghosts afoot, thinly veiled contempt, thug love, tibetan bowls, true crime novels, two 40s, ugly animals, unironic t-shirts, unorthodox prose, victor cayro, warshin my dog, wearing hats in bed, why i cry, world’s smallest horse, writing rhymes in the shower, yearning, youtube comments, zomg

ROMA ARCHEOLOGICA & RESTAURO ARCHITETTURA 2020. «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. The NYT (18 Aug. 2020) & Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (13 Apr. 2020). S.v., "Raffaello architetto", in: The NYT (06 March 2020); Università di Padova (20/07/2020); Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020); Jhon Correa / Facebook (1 July 2020) & Prof. Cammy Brothers (2001). wp.me/pbMWvy-uQ

 

1). ROME - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. Scuderie del Quirinale (5 March - June 2020).

 

A monographic exhibition with over two hundred masterpieces among paintings, drawings and comparative works, dedicated to Raffaello on the 500th anniversary of his death, which took place in Rome on April 6, 1520 at the age of just 37 years old.

 

The exhibition, which finds inspiration particularly in the Raffaello's fundamental Roman period which consecrated him as an artist of incomparable and legendary greatness, tells his whole complex and articulated creative path with richness of detail through a vast corpus of works, for the first time exposed all together.

 

Many institutions involved have contributed to enrich the exhibition with masterpieces from their collections: among these, in Italy, the National Galleries of Ancient Art, the National Art Gallery of Bologna, the Museum and the Real Bosco di Capodimonte, the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, the Brescia Museums Foundation, and abroad, in addition to the Vatican Museums, the Louvre, the National Gallery of London, the Prado Museum, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Albertina in Vienna, the British Museum, the Royal Collection, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lille.

 

Fonte / source:

--- Scuderie del Quirinale (5 March - June 2020).

www.scuderiequirinale.it/mostra/copia-di-raffaello

 

2.1). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483», in: Intervento delle Scuderie del Quirinale per la maratona del MiBACT "Italia chiamò" / Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (Mar 13, 2020).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8l6q9ywLxY&t=112s

 

2.2). ROME - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. / English / Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (Apr. 13, 2020). www.youtube.com/watch?v=s58gYvvNrKQ&t=61s

 

3). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. Scuderie del Quirinale (05/03 - 02/06/2020).

 

Il 6 aprile 1520 muore a Roma, a trentasette anni, Raffaello Sanzio, il più grande pittore del Rinascimento. La città sembra fermarsi nella commozione e nel rimpianto, mentre la notizia della scomparsa si diffonde con incredibile rapidità in tutte le corti europee. S’interrompeva non solo un percorso artistico senza precedenti, ma anche l’ambizioso progetto di ricostruzione grafica della Roma antica, commissionato dal pontefice, che avrebbe riscattato dopo secoli di oblio e rovina la grandezza e la nobiltà della capitale dei Cesari, affermando inoltre una nuova idea di tutela. Sepolto secondo le sue ultime volontà nel Pantheon, simbolo della continuità fra diverse tradizioni di culto, forse l’esempio più emblematico dell’architettura classica, Raffaello diviene immediatamente oggetto di un processo di divinizzazione, mai veramente interrotto, che ci consegna oggi la perfezione e l’armonia della sua arte.

A distanza di cinquecento anni, questa mostra racconta la sua storia e insieme quella di tutta la cultura figurativa occidentale che l’ha considerato un modello imprescindibile. La mostra, articolata secondo un’idea originale, propone un percorso che ripercorre a ritroso l’avventura creativa di Raffaello, da Roma a Firenze, da Firenze all’Umbria, fino alla nativa Urbino. Un incalzante flash-back che consente di ripensare il percorso biografico partendo dalla sua massima espansione creativa negli anni di Leone X. Risalendo il corso della vita di Raffaello di capolavoro in capolavoro, il visitatore potrà rintracciare in filigrana la prefigurazione di quel linguaggio classico che solo a Roma, assimilata nel profondo la lezione dell’antico, si sviluppò con una pienezza che non ha precedenti nella storia dell’arte. Grazie ad un numero eccezionale di capolavori provenienti dalle maggiori raccolte italiane ed europee, la mostra organizzata dalle Scuderie del Quirinale insieme con le Gallerie degli Uffizi, costituisce un’occasione ineguagliabile per osservare da vicino le invenzioni dell’Urbinate. Il suo breve, luminoso percorso ha cambiato per sempre la storia delle arti e del gusto: Raffaello rivive nelle sale dell’esposizione che lo celebra come genio universale.

 

Fonte / source:

--- Scuderie del Quirinale (05/03 - 02/06/2020).

www.scuderiequirinale.it/mostra/raffaello-000

 

3). ROME «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. The NYT (18 Aug. 2020).

 

ROME - In the Virtual (and Actual) Footsteps of Raphael - In Italy and beyond, the plan was to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Renaissance artist’s death with great fanfare. Then came the pandemic, and the virtual world stepped in. The NYT (18 Aug. 2020).

 

______

Also see:

 

--- ROME - Rome Celebrates the Short, but Beautiful, Life of Raphael - Amid new coronavirus restrictions on museums in Italy, a blockbuster show traces the artistʼs life from finish to start. The NYT (06 March 2020).

www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/arts/raphael-rome-coronavirus....

______

 

This was supposed to be the year of Raphael. Five hundred years after his death at 37, the Renaissance master was due to receive the exalted rollout reserved for artistic superstars: blockbuster museum shows in Rome and London; conferences and lectures at universities and cultural centers around the world; flag-waving and wreath-laying in his Italian hometown, Urbino. There was even the tang of controversy when the advisory committee of Florence’s Uffizi Gallery resigned en masse to protest the inclusion of a precious papal portrait in the big exhibition at Rome’s Scuderie del Quirinale. Then the coronavirus hit and Raphael’s annus mirabilis turned into the world’s annus horribilis.

 

When news of the handsome young artist’s death broke in Rome on April 6, 1520, Pope Leo X wept and church bells tolled all over the city.

Half a millennium later, Rome was in lockdown along with the rest of Italy as deaths from the virus spiraled. The Scuderie show, a once-in-a-lifetime gathering of more than 200 works (120 by Raphael) from all over the world, was forced to shut its doors after just three days, despite having presold a record 70,000 tickets. Raphael’s tomb in the Pantheon was supposed to be adorned with a red rose every day of 2020 to commemorate his death — but the ancient temple was also shuttered because of the virus. Lectures and conferences were canceled, postponed or moved online.

 

Poor Raphael. Last year, the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death came off without a hitch. Raphael’s devotees hoped that this

year’s celebrations would restore the artist’s luster, which has dimmed over the past centuries. When the world fell ill this past winter,

Raphael was one of the casualties. But all is not lost. The Scuderie show reopened on June 2 and will remain up until the end of August. The Scuderie’s president, Mario de Simoni, had expected as many as 500,000 people to see the show pre-virus, but now says the number probably won’t exceed 160,000. For those unable to attend in person, the Scuderie has released an English-language version of its excellent video, recapping the highlights of the exhibition, room by room. You’ll want to hit the pause button in Room 2 to admire two masterpieces on loan from the Louvre: a selfportrait with a friend and the portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, one of the glories of Renaissance portraiture. The close-ups of his paintings of women in Room 6 testify to the artist’s passionate appreciation of feminine beauty. Other Scuderie videos (in Italian) delve into particular aspects of his genius — for instance, the jewelry worn by his female subjects, or the literary world he moved in.

Tour guides such as Clam Tours and Joy of Rome now offer virtual journeys in which small groups can zoom around Italy in the footsteps of the artist. On Sept. 13, for example, you can join the Renaissance specialist Antonio Forcellino and other Italian art experts on Clam Tour’s virtual exploration of Raphael’s incomparable frescoes of the four sibyls at Rome’s Santa Maria della Pace church ($25). Check out Joy of Rome’s free two-minute video about Raphael’s frescoes at the Villa Farnesina to see if you’d like to sign up for a two-and-a-half hour virtual tour (prices on request).

 

Even on a laptop screen, Raphael’s ever-evolving craftsmanship and quicksilver brilliance are apparent. “The year of Raphael has not

been ruined, but simply modified,” said Marzia Faietti, a curator of the Scuderie show. “Since many conferences and lectures have been

put off until next year, in a sense there will be two years of Raphael.”

 

For Italians, a silver lining of the pandemic has been the opportunity to relish their cultural treasures without the tourist hordes. “I cried,”

said Francesca Pagliaro, founder of the Joy of Rome tour company, of the experience of standing alone in the Vatican’s recently reopened

Sala di Costantino — one of four rooms in the museum frescoed by Raphael and his students, and which you can view here. “It’s the first

time in five years that I’ve seen the Stanze without scaffolding — and I had it to myself,” Ms. Pagliaro said. “It was magical.” Americans, barred from European travel for the foreseeable future, will have to make do with all this virtual magic. Not ideal — but Raphael’s magic is powerful, subtle and enduring enough to withstand the challenge.

 

The spirit of Urbino

I can attest to this because back in November 2019, I had the opportunity to follow in Raphael’s actual, not virtual, footsteps in Italy. I stood

shivering in the room where he was born in Urbino in 1483. I knelt at the austere tomb in a niche inside the Pantheon where he was

interred 37 years later. I feasted my eyes not only on paintings and frescoes, but on the humble church and glorious Roman chapel that

attest to his emerging genius for architecture. My pilgrimage would be impossible today — but thanks to the wonders of the internet and

the resourcefulness of Italy’s leading cultural institutions, I can remotely retrace my steps, refresh my memories and relive the

revelations.

 

The first revelation came, aptly, in Urbino’s Palazzo Ducale, the magnificent Renaissance palace constructed in the late 15th century by the

humanist and warlord Federico da Montefeltro that now houses the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche. Judge the magnificence for yourself

by clicking through Google Images’ impressive photo archive. Another click puts you face to face with the museum’s sole work by Raphael

— the haunting portrait known as “La Muta” (“The Mute Woman”). As in so many of his portraits, Raphael posed this stern beauty against a solid dark background, eschewing any visual cues that would evoke a sense of place.

 

How, I wondered, did Urbino influence the art of its most famous son?

 

I posed this question to Peter Aufreiter, then director of the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, when I sat down with him in his office in the

Palazzo Ducale. Mr. Aufreiter’s response was to click on an image of Raphael’s 1507 portrait of Federico’s son, Duke Guidobaldo da

Montefeltro (now in the Uffizi), and then summon me to the window. “Look at the hillside across the valley and that house at the base of

the hill — it’s the same background Raphael put in his painting of Guidobaldo.” You can see exactly what Mr. Aufreiter meant by using the

magnify feature on this online image. Urbino’s steep green landscape, limpid light and crystalline architecture — you can also get a good sense of it here — imprinted themselves on the artist’s young mind and surface repeatedly in his work.

 

Even though Raphael spent most of his career in Florence and Rome, Mr. Aufreiter insists that Urbino, whose cityscape has changed little

since the Renaissance, is where you can feel his spirit most intensely.

 

The spirit is palpable in the artisans’ quarter surrounding the house where Raphael was born, the son of the local court painter Giovanni

Santi. Near the summit of the ski-slope-pitched Via Raffaello, just a stone’s throw from the rather pompous bronze monument of the artist

erected in 1897, the Casa Natale di Raffaello has been preserved as a museum. There’s a rather rudimentary virtual tour on its website, but

you’ll get a better feel for the interior and exterior spaces in this YouTube video. In these bare simple rooms and the deep brick courtyard

they enclose, little imagination is required to dial the scene back to Raphael’s apprenticeship in the last years of the 15th century. Giovanni

Santi’s bottega (workshop) occupied the ground floor, and the future master grew up amid the bustle of painters grinding pigments,

dabbing madonnas and trading in art supplies.

 

Father and son conducted a more exalted commerce at Urbino’s Palazzo Ducale. Fabricated of brick, stone and flawless geometry, this

palace was one of the glories of the Italian Renaissance — not only for its divine architecture, but for the refined elegance of the nobles

who gathered here. This video captures some facets of the palace’s perfection — the way its silhouette pierces the profile of surrounding

hills, the ideal proportions of its noble courtyard, the interplay of volume and decoration in its interior.

 

Baldassare Castiglione set his 1528 masterpiece, “The Book of the Courtier,” in this storied palace — and it was here that the young

Raphael polished his manners, sharpened his wit, cultivated invaluable connections and acquired a lifelong passion for classical antiquity.

Raised at court, Raphael was pursued by the powerful (Popes Julius II and Leo X), esteemed by the brilliant (Castiglione and the Urbinoborn

architect Donato Bramante were close friends) and adored by the beautiful. “Raphael was a very amorous person,” wrote Giorgio Vasari, his first biographer. It was Vasari who originated the claim that Raphael died after an overindulgence in sex with his Roman mistress, Margherita Luti. Whatever really killed him on April 6, 1520, Raphael accomplished much and rose high in his brief life — but he never ceased to be “il maestro Urbinate,” the master from Urbino.

 

A couch-surfing brush-for-hire.

Orphaned when his father died in 1494 (his mother had died three years earlier), Raphael spent his teenage years as an apprentice before

undertaking commissions in Umbria and Tuscany. It’s likely that he was in Florence by 1504 — not as a permanent resident but rather a

couch-surfing brush-for-hire.

 

Though Raphael’s footsteps in Florence are faint, there is no question that he encountered the works of both Leonardo da Vinci and

Michelangelo here — including, very likely, the Mona Lisa, which you can view here, and the marble statue of David, which you can see

and read about on the Accademia’s detailed website. Critics and connoisseurs have been measuring this Renaissance trio against each other for 500 years now. Florence’s Uffizi Gallery is the ideal place to revisit this rivalry, both in person and virtually. After a recent renovation, paintings by the big three have been put on display in two beautifully lit adjoining rooms, and you can find them on the Uffizi website.

 

To my eyes, neither Michelangelo nor Leonardo ever matched the sheer painterly virtuosity of the fringed white collar that Raphael stitched around the neck of the cloth merchant Agnolo Doni, or the faint dent he incised between the young businessman’s anxious brows (use the magnify function to zoom in on this image). Agnolo’s 15-year-old bride, Maddalena Strozzi, hangs beside him, posed like the Mona Lisa with bejeweled hands clasped on her lap, but clad in a kaleidoscope of watered red silk, embroidered blue damask and shimmering gauze. Across the Arno are the glories of the Pitti Palace’s Galleria Palatina — the largest collection of Raphael’s works outside the Vatican. Unlike the Uffizi, the Pitti Palace retains the ambience and layout of an aristocratic residence: Paintings are stacked three deep in gilded high-ceilinged chambers; works are arranged idiosyncratically rather than chronologically; and the lighting can be maddeningly inadequate. Luckily for remote visitors, the lighting is much better on the palace’s website, as well as in the Italian and Spanish language videos about the museum’s treasures, posted here.

 

To the Eternal City

Raphael was summoned to Rome in 1508 by Pope Julius II, and he remained there until his death in 1520. Those 12 final years in the

Eternal City marked the apogee of his career. Painter, architect, entrepreneur, archaeologist, pioneer printmaker, Raphael became the

prototype of the artist as celebrity — the Andy Warhol of the Renaissance.

 

In pre-pandemic Rome, visitors had to endure the lines and tour groups that plagued the Vatican Museums in order to spend a few crowded moments with one of Raphael’s supreme accomplishments: the four papal chambers, known as the Stanze di Raffaello, that the artist and his workshop frescoed between 1508 and 1520. These days, in-person visitors to the reopened Vatican Museums enjoy the Stanze along with the nearby Sistine Chapel in ideal conditions. But remote visits can also be rewarding, thanks to the beautifully produced videos and virtual tours now available on the Vatican’s website. With the click of a mouse, you can hop back and forth between the virtual Sistine Chapel ceiling and the Raphael Stanze and decide for yourself which is the greater masterpiece.

 

“Everything he had in art, he had from me,” the curmudgeonly Michelangelo once grumbled of his younger rival. When you view their

roughly contemporaneous fresco cycles one after the other (or side by side on your computer), it’s clear that Raphael did much more than

borrow. “The School of Athens,” the most celebrated work in the Stanze, has the propulsive tension of a film paused at its climactic scene.

Cast members — a mix of classical philosophers and Renaissance savants — converse, argue, scribble, read and declaim on a sprawling,

but unified, “set” framed by classical architecture. By contrast, Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling, for all its bravura, reads like a series of

static cels.

 

After the Vatican’s Raphael Stanze, a logical next stop, whether actually or virtually, is the Villa Farnesina, with its two beguiling frescoed

loggias — “The Triumph of Galatea” in one of the loggias and “Cupid and Psyche” in the other. Despite the name, this riverside Trastevere landmark is neither a villa nor originally a Farnese property, but rather a suburban pleasure pavilion that Agostino Chigi built for himself in the early 16th century. Chigi brought in the finest artists of the day to fresco the loggias; the result is a delightful crazy quilt of mythological scenes and astrological symbols. Raphael’s “Galatea,” with her wind-whipped tresses, elegantly torqued bare torso and dolphin-powered, scallop-shell raft, has become an icon of High Renaissance grace and wit, and you can see it and other highlights in the villa’s video archive. Even if you don’t speak Italian, the short films are worth delving into for the imagery alone.

 

From painting to architecture

In the last phase of his career, Raphael increasingly turned from painting to architecture. Sadly, his major architectural achievements — the grand unfinished Villa Madama perched on a wooded hill two miles north of the Vatican, and the classically inspired Raphael loggias inside the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace — were inaccessible to the public even before the pandemic, and remain so. To get a sense of Raphael’s architectural genius, make (or click) your way to the church of Santa Maria del Popolo in the piazza of the same name at the northwest edge of the historic center. Like so many transplants, Raphael fell under the spell of the Eternal City’s classical substructure: Rome itself, its layers, its ruins and relics, its ceaseless commerce with the past, became a source of inspiration. The chapel he designed for Chigi inside the Popolo church evinces just how deeply and fruitfully Raphael internalized this inspiration. At first glance, it’s just another church chapel — tight, high, adorned with art and inlaid with precious stone. But on this site you can glimpse the almost miraculous geometry of this space — the interplay of disc and dome, the rhythm set up between the vertical pleats of the Corinthian pilasters and the elongated triangles of the twin red marble pyramids that mark the Chigis' graves. Fittingly, the artist who devoted the final years of his career to measuring, cataloging, preserving and mapping Roman antiquities, was laid to rest in the greatest classical structure to survive the ages: the Pantheon. If a trip to the physical Pantheon is not in the cards, you can drop in with Tom Hanks as your guide in this clip from the film “Angels and Demons.” As for his tomb — an easy-to-miss niche with a statue of the Virgin, modest and vague, presiding over the glassed-in coffin — you can view it here.

 

Marzia Faietti, curator of Rome’s Scuderie show, has been struck by how the virus has enhanced Raphael’s reputation and heightened

awareness of the twin beauties of his art and character. “Young people in particular have reacted with an outpouring of enthusiasm and

benevolence which I really didn’t expect,” she said. “The pandemic has brought suffering to so many, but the year of Raphael will be

remembered more vividly, not despite the virus, but because of it.”

 

Fonte / source:

--- The NYT (18 Aug. 2020).

www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/travel/in-the-virtual-and-actu...

 

Foto / fonte / source:

--- ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483», et al., Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (05/03 - 02/06/2020) (08/2020).

www.youtube.com/user/ScuderieQuirinale/videos

 

4.). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483»., in: "Raffaello architetto e la Lettera a Papa Leone X." Università di Padova (20/07/2020).

 

Artista dal talento straordinario, affermato, corteggiato, desiderato. Questo, ma non solo questo, fu Raffaello Sanzio (1483-1520): l'esperienza come architetto, lo studio e l'impegno per la tutela degli edifici antichi di Roma sono di importanza centrale nel suo percorso, a partire dalla realizzazione di opere come la Cappella Chigi e Villa Madama, fino alla stesura, insieme a Baldassarre Castiglione, della Lettera a Papa Leone X. La grande mostra Raffaello 1520-1483, allestita alle Scuderie del Quirinale di Roma, prorogata fino al 30 agosto, dedica ampio spazio alla sua appassionata attività nel campo dell'architettura.

 

"Sin dai primi anni di formazione, l'interesse di Raffaello per l'architettura, in particolare per quella del mondo antico, è fortemente presente - racconta il professor Zaggia al Bo Live - Fino a sfociare in un'opera fondamentale come Lo sposalizio della vergine, in cui compare un tempio a pianta centrale sullo sfondo che interpreta in modo molto chiaro le sperimentazioni del suo tempo in ambito architettonico. A questa sperimentazione dell'architettura sul piano della rappresentazione, segue poi, con il trasferimento di Raffaello a Roma tra il 1508 e il 1509 e l'incontro con Bramante, un interesse concreto rivolto alla costruzione e alla progettazione vera e propria. Da questo punto di vista, il rapporto che si instaura tra Raffaello e Bramante per lo studio dell'architettura antica, conservata all'interno della città, diventa fondamentale punto di partenza per un approfondimento che aprirà strade nuove all'architettura successiva. Con la morte di figure di riferimento, come Bramante appunto, Raffaello diventa la personalità più importante che opera nel campo dell'architettura all'interno dei grandi cantieri pontifici. Si apre così una stagione breve in cui le opere realizzate da Raffaello saranno numerose e importanti: alcune realmente costruite, altre solo progettate".

 

In questo contesto si inserisce la Lettera a Papa Leone X, scritta nel 1519 da Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione, il raffinato autore del Cortegiano (ai due, uniti da amicizia e stima reciproca, è dedicata una mostra al Palazzo Ducale di Urbino, dal titolo Baldassarre Castiglione e Raffaello.Volti e momenti della civiltà di corte), sul tema della tutela e dello studio degli edifici antichi. La premessa al documento è rintracciabile nei fatti avvenuti qualche anno prima: nell'estate del 1515, infatti, Leone X nomina Raffaello præfectus marmorum et lapidum omnium (dal 1514 l'Urbinate già dirigeva la fabbrica di San Pietro). La lettera dedicatoria, la cui prima edizione venne inserita all'interno delle opere di Baldassare Castiglione pubblicate a Padova nel 1733, si apre così: "Sono molti, padre santissimo, i quali misurando col loro piccolo giudizio le cose grandissime che delli romani circa l’arme, e della città di Roma circa al mirabile artificio, ai ricchi ornamenti e alla grandezza degli edifici si scrivono, quelle più presto stimano favolose che vere. Ma altrimenti a me suole avvenire; perché considerando dalle ruine, che ancor si veggono di Roma, la divinità di quegli animi antichi, non istimo fuor di ragione il credere che molte cose a noi paiono impossibili, che ad essi erano facilissime".

 

Nella prima parte Raffaello esalta la grandezza del passato, dichiara le proprie competenze in ambito architettonico e invita il pontefice a intervenire per garantire la tutela dei monumenti antichi, da salvare dal degrado. Nella seconda invece si concentra su questione più tecniche, introducendo anche la descrizione di uno strumento per la misurazione degli edifici antichi di sua invenzione: "Farassi adunque un instromento tondo e piano, come un astrolabio, il diametro del quale sarà due palmi o più o meno, come piace a chi vuole adoperarlo, e la circonferenza di questo istromento si partirà in otto parti giusti, e a ciascuna di quelle parti si porrà il nome d’uno degli otto venti, dividendola in trentadue altre parti picciole, che si chiameranno gradi [...] Con questo adunque misureremo ogni sorte di edificio, di che forma sia, o tondo o quadro o con istrani angoli e svoglimenti quanto dir si possa".

 

"L'importanza della lettera risiede nei principi enunciati all'inizio del testo, in cui Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione sostengono la necessità e l'urgenza di tutelare i monumenti antichi, per trasmetterle alle generazioni future - conclude Zaggia -. Non a caso la lettera, pubblicata alla fine del Settecento, una volta riconosciuto l'autore in Raffaello, diventa il punto di partenza per la legislazione adottata successivamente dagli Stati europei per la protezione del patrimonio artistico e culturale. Erede ultimo di questa tradizione è l'articolo 9 della nostra Costituzione".

 

Fonte/ source:

--- Università di Padova (20/07/2020).

ilbolive.unipd.it/it/news/raffaello-architetto-lettera-pa...

 

4.1). ROMA / Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020): «Raffaello 1520-1483»., "Raffaello architetto e la Lettera a Papa Leone X." S.v., Lettera a papa Leone X di Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione; in: Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020).

 

Nella galleria fotografica potrete scorrere la lettera di Raffaello e Baladassare Castiglione a papa Leone X. Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione, Lettera a papa Leone X, s.d. [1519]. Manoscritto cartaceo costituito da 6 carte di formato 220 x 290 mm circa, ripiegate a formare fascicoletto non rilegato di 24 facciate, di cui 21 scritte, 3 bianche. ASMn, Archivio Castiglioni (acquisto 2016), busta 2, n. 12.

 

Fonte / source:

--- Lettera a papa Leone X di Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione, in: Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020).

www.archiviodistatomantova.beniculturali.it/index.php?it/...

 

4.2). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. Scuderie del Quirinale (05/03 - 02/06/2020), in: Jhon Correa / Facebook (1 July 2020). www.facebook.com/jhon.correa.7549

 

4.3). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Lettera a papa Leone X di Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione. S.v.,

Prof. Cammy Brothers, “Architecture, History, Archaeology: Drawing Ancient Rome in the Letter to Leo X & in Sixteenth-Century Practice,” in Coming About…A Festschrift for John Shearman, ed. Lars R. Jones and Louisa C. Matthew. Cambridge: Harvard University Art Museums (2001): 135–40 [in PDF].

 

Fonte / source:

--- Prof. Cammy Brothers / academia.edu. (2020).

neu.academia.edu/CammyBrothers