So whaddya think to my new template? All my own work.
Well, not exactly. The shape is ripped off from a Blogger-ported version of the legendary/clichéd Kubrick theme. I've changed things around and added the fancy header graphic.
The image, I hardly need to tell you, is a detail from Raphael's School of Athens. You can see the whole thing plastered to a wall (literally - it's a fresco) in the Raphael Rooms in the Vatican Museums. The Raph Rooms are well worth a visit, as long as you can cope with the hordes of fat Floridian tourists steaming through at high speed on their way to the Sistine Chapel. The Sistine ceiling is famous, The School of Athens less so, so the porky Yanks tend to ignore it. That's a shame, because for my money Raphael's painting is nearly as good as Michelangelo's, and there's the added bonus of not getting a stiff neck when you look at it.
In case you don't know the work, it's just a big, imaginary, anachrononistic painting of lots of philosophers hanging out and talking philosophy. In the detail above you can see: a bit of Ptolemy the geographer, holding an inflatable globe to establish his geographical credentials; Euclid, apparently bending down to pick up a 10p piece he's spotted on the floor; and a bunch of their students, one of whom seems to be doing the Twist.
The billy-no-mates over on the left is Diogenes the Cynic. Diogenes lived as close to nature as he could. This wasn't 'getting back to nature' in the Tom and Barbara sense, but rather in the sense of sleeping rough and not washing - hence the lack of a social life.
When Diogenes was asked how he maintained an ascetic lifestyle and overcame lustful thoughts, he famously whopped his chopper out and began to masturbate - possibly the finest example in history of educating by example, albeit by a method that seems to have fallen from favour in teacher training colleges. Lots of the other philosophers in the painting are pictured doing the things they're most famous for (Pythagoras and Euclid doing sums; Diagoras legging it out of Athens), so how come Raphael doesn't have Diogenes, who is, after all, centre-stage, having one off the wrist? It's not as if the Renaissance Popes were squeamish about this sort of thing. If I'd been the painter that's what he'd have been doing. In fact, there wouldn't be anyone else in the picture, and it would be called Old Greek Bloke Having A Wank.
Still, I suppose that's the difference between me and Raphael.
tags: Raphael, Vatican, Diogenes, art, masturbation
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Published by Earthman
on Wednesday, September 20, 2006 at 3:09 PM. Well, not exactly. The shape is ripped off from a Blogger-ported version of the legendary/clichéd Kubrick theme. I've changed things around and added the fancy header graphic.
The image, I hardly need to tell you, is a detail from Raphael's School of Athens. You can see the whole thing plastered to a wall (literally - it's a fresco) in the Raphael Rooms in the Vatican Museums. The Raph Rooms are well worth a visit, as long as you can cope with the hordes of fat Floridian tourists steaming through at high speed on their way to the Sistine Chapel. The Sistine ceiling is famous, The School of Athens less so, so the porky Yanks tend to ignore it. That's a shame, because for my money Raphael's painting is nearly as good as Michelangelo's, and there's the added bonus of not getting a stiff neck when you look at it.
In case you don't know the work, it's just a big, imaginary, anachrononistic painting of lots of philosophers hanging out and talking philosophy. In the detail above you can see: a bit of Ptolemy the geographer, holding an inflatable globe to establish his geographical credentials; Euclid, apparently bending down to pick up a 10p piece he's spotted on the floor; and a bunch of their students, one of whom seems to be doing the Twist.
The billy-no-mates over on the left is Diogenes the Cynic. Diogenes lived as close to nature as he could. This wasn't 'getting back to nature' in the Tom and Barbara sense, but rather in the sense of sleeping rough and not washing - hence the lack of a social life.
When Diogenes was asked how he maintained an ascetic lifestyle and overcame lustful thoughts, he famously whopped his chopper out and began to masturbate - possibly the finest example in history of educating by example, albeit by a method that seems to have fallen from favour in teacher training colleges. Lots of the other philosophers in the painting are pictured doing the things they're most famous for (Pythagoras and Euclid doing sums; Diagoras legging it out of Athens), so how come Raphael doesn't have Diogenes, who is, after all, centre-stage, having one off the wrist? It's not as if the Renaissance Popes were squeamish about this sort of thing. If I'd been the painter that's what he'd have been doing. In fact, there wouldn't be anyone else in the picture, and it would be called Old Greek Bloke Having A Wank.
Still, I suppose that's the difference between me and Raphael.
tags: Raphael, Vatican, Diogenes, art, masturbation
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