Modona and child theif

Chapter 2 The Secret Life of Paintings R. Foster & P. Tudor-Craig

Who are the people? 

This chapter sets about discovering Van Eyck's painting 'The Madonna and the Chancellor Rolin.' The method is intended to be orderly and is predicated by a list of sequential letters. As the focus seems to be on bringing unrealized facts to consciousness there are also latent psychological themes that are present. These psychological themes seem more important but the discussion heavily dotes on matter-of-facts.

The first section begins a scrutiny of the two figures that are directly in front of us. The first figure that is mentioned is a woman and a child. The woman was painted from life but her personal life is not expressed in the portrait but used for her appearance of beauty, youth, and used to idealize motherhood. As the book scans her for odd peculiarities it finds she is a similar model used by the painter for other paintings where she takes on similar roles. The baby also seems to reoccur and it's deduced that Van Eyck used studies from a particular sitting for work that spanned decades. Her presence is similar and the paintings seem to variate slightly.

The Madonna figure is painted in a way suggesting the figure is coming into being. The book suggests this because of her posture and relating it to similar practices that are tied to sculptural depictions of the same figure. Also keeping in mind this character is not depicting someone who the painter has met and there is an element of fancy and definitely one of transforming an ordinary woman into the emblem of religious motherhood.

The man depicted is treated with much more scrutiny but also treated as real. The book almost desecrates him and being real he seems much more dubious than the woman who has been transformed. "More striking than handsome," as the book describes him. The man is the one Nicholas Rolin--a ambitious sort who commissioned the painting. The painting's intention is described as a person piece for him to contemplate and hopefully contrive miracles through observation of the divine symbols in it.

While it may speak to opulence and narcissism of the character, it also focuses on a need for piety. The subject is a man who is mired in the strings of finance but displays a want for divine. The woman is a Jungian archetype who's function is to make present the intentions of what the mind has ordered that is unknown and her guise is one of holiness rather than a earthly or sexual apparition.

Birth of Hermes Imagines Philostratus

Hermes is born in a place so foreign from where humans live that he must be divine. On top of the mountain of Olympus there is little to nurture human life or to daunt them for that matter. Hermes takes the place for many things but here he is a thief--and still a child. His antics are not caused by greed and oddly epicurean.

Cows so purely white they correspond to Apollo are sneakily cowherded into the earth in some unexplainable way. When Apollo tries to get his cows back he sounds like a fool and becomes angry. Instead of reconciling with Apollo, Hermes has another target. He gets caught stealing Apollo’s arrows. The baby that was showered with nice flowers and dressed in fine clothing then turns fury into pleasure.