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Artists and Their Art

My wife asked me, as I was working on yet another artist and another Pagina Artis to display his or her work, why are you spending so many hours on artist and their art which she seemed to think was a little peculiar for me to do. When one was done then I had to do another again and again and again. She wondered to herself, "Will there be an end to this obsession?" I saw a look of bewildered puzzlement on her face as no readily given or articulated response came quickly from my lips. This wise Athena then spoke again to me. Senex Magister, you must tell me what is it that intrigues you so much. To add to her confusion and her probable frustration I said in my usual and normal harmonious tone that my deep voice projects so well that "I had no simple answer to such a 'query'." She stood up and said that there must be more, and I looked into her beautiful green eyes as I said, "of course there is".

When you have a chronic illness and disability as I do, you have time and sometimes too much time to consider and ponder on the nature of the world that for some unknown reason you were placed. Why wasn't it the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, or even the nineteenth century? Are we the victims of circumstance or is there an intelligent design in some 'time space continuum' that we simply are not able to understand? I am sure that your answer is just as valid as any I might have. Yet, I do find myself thinking about my own mortality more often than when I was a picture of youthful vitality such as Adonis (would that such a thing could have ever been a possibility).

Aphrodite and Adonis

This has lately ended up with writing normally a poem of some sort. I will never lay claim to being a literary artifex but you will find them emotional or at least I think you will. Iustitia is a right that should belong to Humanity just as Art should.


Iustitia et Clementia
Justice and Compassion

Lucifera

She brings light to my world where I too
often see the darkness of hopelessness.
It is a darkness that was born out of a gloom that said
what can you do or say that has value of worth.

I was in a torment of such anguished and tortured thoughts
to believe that my efforts would be mere futility.
I cried within a soul torn between despair and hope
thinking that Iustitia had perished and taken away to Dis.

Is she to wander in her own purgatory senseless from her
failure to restore fairness and equity to the law?
The Lethe with her waters of forgetfulness will not appease
the sacrilege suffered by Iustitia at the hands of man.

The value of Justice must be cherished and loved by all
if we wish it to protect the natural rights of our shared humanity.
Lady Diana comes to wipe away my tears and bear her torch of light
to guide our path as you and I restore health and strength
to the true Lucifera of Iustitia.

~ Senex Magister

Diana Lucifera
Diana the Torch Bearer (The Bringer of Enlightenment)


I don't think I have adequately answered my wife's question though I have been side tracked a bit. When I look at these paintings, I see real people and real places who simply are not in my reality. We too often look at the past and history as if there is some unreal characteristic to it. It is not that we don't believe they existed or some event such as the 'Signing of the Declaration of Independence' happened. They just don't have the physical reality we experience in our lives every day. I remind myself each time I look at one of these paintings that they were real people and real places in time that is essentially no different or less distinct than the life and people I experience. I do wonder what it would be like to speak with them and discover their hopes and ambitions and truly learn what kind of people they were. Not a simple thing to learn from a painting or a portrait but an exciting idea to imagine.

Senex Magister


We are allowing our Pagina Artis to grow and broaden itself by adding a page that I have decided to call 'Persona Historiae' which is going to focus on history as well as individuals who have had an impact on the progress of 'Man' and the way we look at this dialogue between our past and our present. I have several quotes from George Santayana that I hope you will think about as you consider the significance of 'Historia'.

A man is morally free when, in full possession of his living humanity, he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity.
~George Santayana

Character is the basis of happiness and happiness the sanction of character.
~George Santayana

Our character...is an omen of our destiny, and the more integrity we have and keep, the simpler and nobler that destiny is likely to be.
~George Santayana, "The German Mind: A Philosophical Diagnosis"

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

~George Santayana, The Life of Reason

Persona Historiae


Last Updated: March 24, 2014


This is one of my more unique pages and I hope both informative and enlightened in its own special way. Yet, as varied as I hope it is - this page caused me to revisit material I have already done and delve into areas about which I still hope to learn much more.
~ Senex Magister


I am first a Dan Brown Fan and since I have spent a little more than the past thirty years in the Washington Metropolitan Area, so I read his Lost Symbol and it held a special interest for me. If you have ever had the opportunity to stand in the Rotunda of the Capitol, I hope you have looked above to appreciate the The Apotheosis of Washington depicted so beautifully in its Dome.
~ Senex Magister


The Apotheosis of Washington


Giotto di Bondone

Fra Angelico

Rogier van der Weyden

Hans Memling

Giovanni Bellini

Domenico Ghirlandaio

Sandro Botticelli

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci

Luca Signorelli

Albrecht Durer

Lucas Cranach the Elder

Giorgione

Lorenzo Lotto

Tiziano Vecelli

Michelangelo Buonarroti

Raphael

Hans Holbein the Younger

Portraits of Elizabeth I of England

Agnolo Bronzino

Jacopo Robusti Tintoretto

Paulo Veronese

Caravaggio Michelangelo Merisi

El Greco

Peter Paul Rubens

Sir Anthony Van Dyck

Frans Hals

The Laughing Cavalier by Frans Hals

Nicolas Poussin

Diego Velazquez

Claude Lorrain

Rembrandt

Gerard Terborch

Johannes Vermeer

Pieter de Hooch

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Sebastiano Ricci

Giovanni Antonio Canal
(aka Canaletto)

Francois Boucher

Thomas Gainsborough

Joshua Reynolds

Jean Honore Fragonard

Angelica Kauffmann

John Singleton Copely

Benjamin West

Charles Willson Peale

Jacques-Louis David

Francisco de Goya

Gilbert Stuart

John Trumbull

Casper David Friedrich

Joseph William Turner

John Constable

Johan Christian Dahl

Paul Delaroche

George Catlin

Thomas Cole

Asher Brown Durand

Eugene Delacroix

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

Franz Xaver Winterhalter

Gustave Courbet

Jean Baptiste Camille Corot

George Caleb Bingham

Thomas Couture

Jean Francois Millet

John Frederick Kensett

Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier

William Bradford

George Inness

George Frederick Watts

John William Waterhouse

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

William Bouguereau

Jean-Leon Gerome

Lord Frederick Leighton

Arthur Hughes

Ford Madox Brown

Sanford Robinson Gifford

John Everett Millais

William Holman Hunt

Edward Burne-Jones

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Paul Gustave Dore

Gustave Moreau

Leon Bonnat

Aubrey Beardsley

James Jacques Joseph Tissot

Thomas Worthington Whittredge

Albert Bierstadt

Thomas Hill

James McNeill Whistler

Jules Joseph Lefebvre

Paul Cezanne

Edouard Manet

Camille Pissarro

Vincent van Gogh

Paul Gauguin

John Atkinson Grimshaw

Alfred Sisley

Ivan Aivazovsky

Frederic Edwin Church

Edwin Lord Weeks

Eastman Johnson

Alfred Stevens

Winslow Homer

Pierre Auguste Renoir

Edgar Degas

Gustav Klimt

Albert Goodwin

Gustave Caillebotte

Jean Beraud

Edmund Blair Leighton

Lovis Corinth

John William Godward

Jasper Francis Cropsey

John George Brown

Alfred Thompson Bricher

John Singer Sargent

Claude Monet

Mary Cassatt

Leon-Augustin L'hermitte

William Merritt Chase

Thomas Eakins

Daniel Ridgway Knight

Hans Makart

Frank Duveneck

Anders Zorn

Joaqnui Sorolla y Bastida

Giovanni Boldini

Sir Francis Dicksee

Rudolf Ernst

Thomas Moran

John Henry Twachtman

Frederic Remington

Charles Marion Russell

Eugene de Blass

Alice Pike Barney

John Maler Collier

Issac Levitan

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Alphonse Maria Mucha

Frederick Childe Hassam

Amedeo Modigliani

Guy Orlando Rose

Charles Dana Gibson

Wassily Kandinsky

Edward Sheriff Curtis

Alfred Henry Maurer

William James Glackens

August Macke

Franz Marc

Jules Pascin


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This page is the work of
~ Senex Magister