Rants and reactions to contemporary politics, art and culture.
Thursday, June 18, 2015
Giornale Adriatico-Mediterraneo VII: Assisi
photograph by Hallie Cohen
The seeds of Renaissance were planted in Assisi. One of
Giotto’s frescoes in the Basilicaof San Francesco d'Assisi literally shows the founder of an order based on its vows of poverty,
holding up the church. If you believe there’s a God given order to life, you
might say that the advent of Francis and the Franciscans was the way things
were meant to be. Or you could look at it as matter of historical necessity or a
product of human evolution. The net result was the democratization of deity.
You might say that Francis’ contribution to Catholicism was tantamount to
Copernicus’ understanding of the solar system. Both challenged the current
conceptions of man’s place in the universe. Within two years after Francis’s
death painters were flocking to Assisi and supplanting images of Christ with
the human being who’d become a saint. Giotto depicts Francis with a halo; at
the time an image like Saint Francis feeding birds must have been as radical a
statement in terms of artistic and religious iconography as say Last Tango whose revolutionary impact
Pauline Kael once compared to Stravinsky’s TheRite of Spring. The history of
sensibility is rather dramatic and what was revolutionary in the 13th
century is a far cry from what is going to make waves seven centuries
later—though one can argue that Bertolucci like St. Francis was also exploring
the nature of faith. Assisi is a tourist mecca filled with the usual
reproductions and trinkets, which are an affront to everything Francis stood
for. But walk into the The Basilica of St. Claire named after the famed female compatriot of Francis and see her image to
one of side of the crucifixion with that of Francis kissing Christ’s feet. Then
walk out to see the vista where still sits the diminutive Porziuncola, the church that Francis once occupied within the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli If one
of the most important aspects of Renaissance art was perspective, you’ll begin
to get a feeling for the power of an idea whose time has come.
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Francis Levy's debut novel, Erotomania: A Romance, was released in August 2008 by Two Dollar Radio.
His short stories, criticism, humor, and poetry have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, The Village Voice, The East Hampton Star, The Quarterly, Penthouse, Architectural Digest, TV Guide, The Journal of Irreproducible Results, and other publications. One of his Voice humor pieces was anthologized in The Big Book of New American Humor (HarperCollins). His collection of parables, The Kafka Studies Department with illustrations by Hallie Cohen will appear in
September.
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