1.
Allegory
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As a literary device, an allegory is a metaphor whose vehicle may be a character, place or event, representing real-world issues and occurrences. Many ancient religions are based on astrological allegories, that is, allegories of the movement of the sun, in classical literature two of the best-known allegories are the Cave in Platos Republic and the story of the stomach and its members in the speech of Menenius Agrippa. One of the examples of allegory, Platos Allegory of the Cave. In this allegory, Plato describes a group of people who have lived chained in an all of their lives. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows, using language to identify their world. He tries to tell the people in the cave of his discovery, also allegorical is Ezekiel 16 and 17, wherein the capture of that same vine by the mighty Eagle represents Israels exile to Rome. Allegory has an ability to freeze the temporality of a story, Mediaeval thinking accepted allegory as having a reality underlying any rhetorical or fictional uses. The allegory was as true as the facts of surface appearances, if, then, the Greeks or others say that they were not committed to the care of Peter and his successors, they necessarily confess that they are not of the sheep of Christ. This text also demonstrates the frequent use of allegory in religious texts during the Mediaeval Period, following the tradition, since meaningful stories are nearly always applicable to larger issues, allegories may be read into many stories which the author may not have recognised. This is allegoresis, or the act of reading a story as an allegory. S, lewis and A Kingdom Far and Clear, The Complete Swan Lake Trilogy by Mark Helprin. The story of the apple falling onto Isaac Newtons head is another famous allegory and it simplified the idea of gravity by depicting a simple way it was supposedly discovered. It also made the scientific revelation well known by condensing the theory into a short tale. According to Henry Littlefields 1964 article, L. Yet, George MacDonald emphasised in 1893 that, A fairy tale is not an allegory, I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and this further reinforces the idea of forced allegoresis, as allegory is often a matter of interpretation and only sometimes of original artistic intention. Like allegorical stories, allegorical poetry has two meanings – a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning, some unique specimens of allegory can be found in the following works, Edmund Spenser – The Faerie Queene, The several knights in the poem actually stand for several virtues. Nathaniel Hawthorne – Young Goodman Brown, The Devils Staff symbolises defiance of God, the characters names, such as Goodman and Faith, ironically serve as paradox in the conclusion of the story. Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter, The scarlet letter symbolises many things, the characters, while developed with interiority, are allegorical in that they represent ways of seeing the world. George Orwell – Animal Farm, The pigs stand for political figures of the Russian Revolution, lászló Krasznahorkai - The Melancholy of Resistance and the film Werckmeister Harmonies, It uses a circus to describe an occupying dysfunctional government
2.
Abundantia
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For the Christian saint, see Saint Abundantia. In ancient Roman religion, Abundantia was a personification of abundance. She was among the embodiments of virtues in religious propaganda that cast the emperor as the ensurer of Golden Age conditions, Abundantia thus figures in art, cult, and literature, but has little mythology as such. She may have survived in some form in Roman Gaul and medieval France, the Augustan poet Ovid gives Abundantia a role in the myth of Acheloüs the river god, one of whose horns was ripped from his forehead by Hercules. The horn was taken up by the Naiads and transformed into the cornucopia that was granted to Abundantia, on Neronian coinage, she was associated with Ceres and equated with Annona, who embodied the grain supply. Like Annona, Abundantia was a virtue in action in such locations as the harbor, Abundantia is seated and holds a cornucopia as an image of the abundance that stems from Mithras act. It has been suggested that the Gallic goddess Rosmerta had a functional equivalence to Abundantia, but the two are never directly identified in inscriptions. William of Auvergne, a bishop of Paris, mentions a Domina Abundia, who appears in the Roman de la Rose as “Dame Habonde. ”The bishop derives her name from abundantia. At night the dominae enter houses where offerings have been set out for them and they eat and drink from the vessels, but the contents are undiminished. If they are pleased, they bring prosperity and fertility, william regarded these practices as a form of idolatry. Folklorists of the 19th century saw these figures as Celtic fairies, nicholas of Cusa reports that on his travels through the French Alps in 1457, he met two old women who told him they were in the service of Domina Abundia. They identified themselves as apostate Christians, and had imprisoned for witchcraft. Nicholas felt that they had been deluded by the devil, in later Western art Abundantia is often portrayed holding her cornucopia and sheaves of corn or wheat
3.
Peter Paul Rubens
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Sir Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish/Netherlandish draughtsman and painter. He is widely considered as the most notable artist of Flemish Baroque art school, the catalogue of his works by Michael Jaffé lists 1,403 pieces, excluding numerous copies made in his workshop. His commissioned works were mostly history paintings, which included religious and mythological subjects and he painted portraits, especially of friends, and self-portraits, and in later life painted several landscapes. Rubens designed tapestries and prints, as well as his own house and he also oversaw the ephemeral decorations of the royal entry into Antwerp by the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand in 1635. His drawings are mostly extremely forceful but not overly detailed and he also made great use of oil sketches as preparatory studies. For altarpieces he painted on slate to reduce reflection problems. Rubens was born in the city of Siegen to Jan Rubens and he was named in honour of Saint-Peter and Paul, because he was born on their solemnety. His father, a Calvinist, and mother fled Antwerp for Cologne in 1568, after increased religious turmoil and persecution of Protestants during the rule of the Spanish Netherlands by the Duke of Alba. Jan Rubens became the adviser of Anna of Saxony, the second wife of William I of Orange. Following Jan Rubens imprisonment for the affair, Peter Paul Rubens was born in 1577, the family returned to Cologne the next year. In 1589, two years after his fathers death, Rubens moved with his mother Maria Pypelincks to Antwerp, religion figured prominently in much of his work and Rubens later became one of the leading voices of the Catholic Counter-Reformation style of painting. In Antwerp, Rubens received a Renaissance humanist education, studying Latin, by fourteen he began his artistic apprenticeship with Tobias Verhaeght. Subsequently, he studied under two of the leading painters of the time, the late Mannerist artists Adam van Noort. Much of his earliest training involved copying earlier works, such as woodcuts by Hans Holbein the Younger. Rubens completed his education in 1598, at time he entered the Guild of St. Luke as an independent master. In 1600 Rubens travelled to Italy and he stopped first in Venice, where he saw paintings by Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto, before settling in Mantua at the court of Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga. The colouring and compositions of Veronese and Tintoretto had an effect on Rubenss painting. With financial support from the Duke, Rubens travelled to Rome by way of Florence in 1601, there, he studied classical Greek and Roman art and copied works of the Italian masters
4.
Classical antiquity
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It is the period in which Greek and Roman society flourished and wielded great influence throughout Europe, North Africa and Southwestern Asia. Conventionally, it is taken to begin with the earliest-recorded Epic Greek poetry of Homer, and continues through the emergence of Christianity and it ends with the dissolution of classical culture at the close of Late Antiquity, blending into the Early Middle Ages. Such a wide sampling of history and territory covers many disparate cultures, Classical antiquity may refer also to an idealised vision among later people of what was, in Edgar Allan Poes words, the glory that was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome. The culture of the ancient Greeks, together with influences from the ancient Near East, was the basis of art, philosophy, society. The earliest period of classical antiquity takes place before the background of gradual re-appearance of historical sources following the Bronze Age collapse, the 8th and 7th centuries BC are still largely proto-historical, with the earliest Greek alphabetic inscriptions appearing in the first half of the 8th century. Homer is usually assumed to have lived in the 8th or 7th century BC, in the same period falls the traditional date for the establishment of the Ancient Olympic Games, in 776 BC. The Phoenicians originally expanded from Canaan ports, by the 8th century dominating trade in the Mediterranean, carthage was founded in 814 BC, and the Carthaginians by 700 BC had firmly established strongholds in Sicily, Italy and Sardinia, which created conflicts of interest with Etruria. The Etruscans had established control in the region by the late 7th century BC, forming the aristocratic. According to legend, Rome was founded on April 21,753 BC by twin descendants of the Trojan prince Aeneas, Romulus and Remus. As the city was bereft of women, legend says that the Latins invited the Sabines to a festival and stole their unmarried maidens, leading to the integration of the Latins and the Sabines. Archaeological evidence indeed shows first traces of settlement at the Roman Forum in the mid-8th century BC, the seventh and final king of Rome was Tarquinius Superbus. As the son of Tarquinius Priscus and the son-in-law of Servius Tullius, Superbus was of Etruscan birth and it was during his reign that the Etruscans reached their apex of power. Superbus removed and destroyed all the Sabine shrines and altars from the Tarpeian Rock, the people came to object to his rule when he failed to recognize the rape of Lucretia, a patrician Roman, at the hands of his own son. Lucretias kinsman, Lucius Junius Brutus, summoned the Senate and had Superbus, after Superbus expulsion, the Senate voted to never again allow the rule of a king and reformed Rome into a republican government in 509 BC. In fact the Latin word Rex meaning King became a dirty and hated throughout the Republic. In 510, Spartan troops helped the Athenians overthrow the tyrant Hippias, cleomenes I, king of Sparta, put in place a pro-Spartan oligarchy conducted by Isagoras. Greece entered the 4th century under Spartan hegemony, but by 395 BC the Spartan rulers removed Lysander from office, and Sparta lost her naval supremacy. Athens, Argos, Thebes and Corinth, the two of which were formerly Spartan allies, challenged Spartan dominance in the Corinthian War, which ended inconclusively in 387 BC
5.
Allegory of Fortune
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Bearing initials, but undated, it measures 200.7 by 133 centimetres. Rosa was known for his paintings, but also worked in the sphere of mythology, witchcraft, portraits. Since 1978 it has been in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, the painting was made at much the same time as Rosa penned Babilonia, a satirical condemnation of the papal court. According to art critic Brian Sewell, the target of the painting could not be misinterpreted. Rosas friends warned him after viewing it privately, that the painting should not be displayed openly as it was an attack on Pope Alexander VIIs patronage. In 1659 the painting was exhibited at the Pantheon, Rome, only the intervention of the popes brother, Don Marco Chigi, saved him from this humiliation. An earlier painting of Fortune was undertaken by Rosa during the 1640s, the overall dimensions of the undated oil on canvas are 200.7 by 133 centimetres wide, the initials SR inscribed on the book at the lower left represent the signature of the artist. The painting, sometimes referred to as La Fortuna, depicts Fortuna, gemstones, coronets, a sceptre, gold coins, pearls, roses, together with grapes, cereal, and berries flow from the cornucopia onto the animals below. In turn the animals are stamping on the symbols of education, the arts, and knowledge. The donkey, the symbol of the pope, wearing a red and gold coat as a drapery, is suppressing and casting a shadow on an owl. A pig stepping on a rose also symbolizes the same thing, after being displayed in 1659, the painting was acquired by Carlo de Rossi and on his death in around 1683 became the property of Antonio Vallori. It moved from Italy to England after Vallori sold it to Henry Scudamore, the duke was completing a Grand Tour and purchased two Rosa paintings, the other one entitled, Nursing of Jupiter. Passed down by inheritance, the Fortune painting remained in the possession of the various Dukes of Beaufort until sold by the duke in 1957. It was acquired by J. Paul Getty from the gallery in 1971
6.
Salvator Rosa
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Salvator Rosa was an Italian Baroque painter, poet, and printmaker, who was active in Naples, Rome, and Florence. As a painter, he is best known as unorthodox and extravagant as well as being a perpetual rebel, Rosa was born in Arenella, at that time in the outskirts of Naples, on either June 20 or July 21,1615. His mother was Giulia Greca Rosa, a member of one of the Greek families of Sicily and his father, Vito Antonio de Rosa, a land surveyor, urged his son to become a lawyer or a priest, and entered him into the convent of the Somaschi Fathers. Yet Salvator showed a preference for the arts and secretly worked with his maternal uncle Paolo Greco to learn about painting. He soon transferred himself to the tutelage of his brother-in-law Francesco Fracanzano, a pupil of Ribera, and afterward to either Aniello Falcone, some sources claim he spent time living with roving bandits. He continued apprenticeship with Falcone, helping him complete his battlepiece canvases, in that studio, it is said that Lanfranco took notice of his work, and advised him to relocate to Rome, where he stayed from 1634–36. Returning to Naples, he began painting haunting landscapes, overgrown vegetation, or jagged beaches, mountains. Rosa was among the first to paint romantic landscapes, with a turn for scenes of picturesque, often turbulent and rugged scenes peopled with shepherds, brigands, seamen. These early landscapes were sold cheaply through private dealers and he returned to Rome in 1638–39, where he was housed by Cardinal Francesco Maria Brancaccio, bishop of Viterbo. For the Chiesa Santa Maria della Morte in Viterbo, Rosa painted his first and one of his few altarpieces, while Rosa had a facile genius at painting, he pursued a wide variety of arts, music, poetry, writing, etching, and acting. In Rome, he befriended Pietro Testa and Claude Lorrain, in costume, he inveighed against the farcical comedies acted in the Trastevere under the direction of Bernini. While his plays were successful, this activity also gained him enemies among patrons and artists, including Bernini himself. By late 1639, he had to relocate to Florence, where he stayed for eight years, in part, he had been invited by a Cardinal Gian Carlo de Medici. Once there, Rosa sponsored a combination of studio and salon of poets, playwrights, to the rigid art milieu of Florence, he introduced his canvases of wild landscapes, while influential, he gathered few true pupils. Another painter poet, Lorenzo Lippi, shared with Rosa the hospitality of the cardinal, Lippi encouraged him to proceed with the poem Il Malmantile Racquistato. He was well acquainted also with Ugo and Giulio Maffei, and was housed with them in Volterra, where he wrote four satires Music, Poetry, Painting, about the same time he painted his own portrait, now in the National Gallery, London. In 1646 he returned to Naples, and appears to have sympathized with the 1648 insurrection of Masaniello, whether he participated in the insurrection is unknown. He painted a portrait of Masaniello—probably from reminiscence rather than life, on the approach of Don Juan de Austria, the blood-stained Compagnia dispersed
7.
Fortuna
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Fortuna was the goddess of fortune and personification of luck in Roman religion. She might bring good or bad luck, she could be represented as veiled and blind, as in modern depictions of Lady Justice, and came to represent lifes capriciousness. She was also a goddess of fate, as Atrox Fortuna, she claimed the lives of the princeps Augustus grandsons Gaius and Lucius. Her father was said to be Jupiter and like him, she could also be bountiful, as Annonaria she protected grain supplies. June 11 was sacred to her, on June 24 she was given cult at the festival of Fors Fortuna, fortunas Roman cult was variously attributed to Servius Tullius – whose exceptional good fortune suggested their sexual intimacy – and to Ancus Marcius. The two earliest temples mentioned in Roman Calendars were outside the city, on the bank of the Tiber. After undisclosed rituals they then rowed back, garlanded and inebriated, also Fortuna had a temple at the Forum Boarium. Here Fortuna was twinned with the cult of Mater Matuta, and the temples have been revealed in the excavation beside the church of SantOmobono. Fortuna Primigenia of Praeneste was adopted by Romans at the end of 3rd century BC in an important cult of Fortuna Publica Populi Romani on the Quirinalis outside the Porta Collina, no temple at Rome, however, rivalled the magnificence of the Praenestine sanctuary. Fortunas identity as personification of chance events was closely tied to virtus, an oracle at the Temple of Fortuna Primigena in Praeneste used a form of divination in which a small boy picked out one of various futures that were written on oak rods. Cults to Fortuna in her many forms are attested throughout the Roman world, dedications have been found to Fortuna Dubia, Fortuna Brevis and Fortuna Mala. She is found in a variety of domestic and personal contexts, during the early Empire, an amulet from the House of Menander in Pompeii links her to the Egyptian goddess Isis, as Isis-Fortuna. She is functionally related to the god Bonus Eventus, who is represented as her counterpart. Her name seems to derive from Vortumna, the earliest reference to the Wheel of Fortune, emblematic of the endless changes in life between prosperity and disaster, is from 55 BC. Never have sceptres obtained calm peace or certain tenure, care on care weighs them down, great kingdoms sink of their own weight, and Fortune gives way ‘neath the burden of herself. Sails swollen with favouring breezes fear blasts too strongly theirs, the tower which rears its head to the clouds is beaten by rainy Auster. Whatever Fortune has raised on high, she lifts but to bring low. ”Fortuna did not disappear from the imagination with the ascendancy of Christianity. Let the bad worship her. this supposed deity, Fortuna, then, was a servant of God, and events, individual decisions, the influence of the stars were all merely vehicles of Divine Will
8.
Mythology
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Mythology refers variously to the collected myths of a group of people or to the study of such myths. Myths are the people tell to explain nature, history. Myth is a feature of every culture, mythologizing continues, as shown in contemporary mythopoeia such as urban legends and the expansive fictional mythoi created by fantasy novels and comics. A cultures collective mythology helps convey belonging, shared and religious experiences, behavioral models, the study of myth began in ancient history. Rival classes of the Greek myths by Euhemerus, Plato and Sallustius were developed by the Neoplatonists, the nineteenth-century comparative mythology reinterpreted myth as a primitive and failed counterpart of science, a disease of language, or a misinterpretation of magical ritual. Recent approaches often view myths as manifestations of psychological, cultural, or societal truths, the term mythology predates the word myth by centuries. It first appeared in the fifteenth-century, borrowed from the Middle French term mythologie, the word mythology, comes from Middle French mythologie, from Late Latin mythologia, from Greek μυθολογία mythología from μῦθος mythos and -λογία -logia. The word mythología appears in Plato, but was used as a term for fiction or story-telling of any kind, combining mỹthos. From Lydgate until the seventeenth or eighteenth-century, mythology was similarly used to mean a moral, fable, from its earliest use in reference to a collection of traditional stories or beliefs, mythology implied the falsehood of the stories being described. It came to be applied by analogy with similar bodies of traditional stories among other cultures around the world. The Greek loanword mythos and Latinate mythus both appeared in English before the first example of myth in 1830, in present use, mythology usually refers to the collected myths of a group of people, but may also mean the study of such myths. For example, Greek mythology, Roman mythology and Hittite mythology all describe the body of myths retold among those cultures, dundes defined myth as a sacred narrative that explains how the world and humanity evolved into their present form. Lincoln defined myth as ideology in narrative form, scholars in other fields use the term myth in varied ways. In a broad sense, the word can refer to any traditional story, due to this pejorative sense, some scholars opted for the term mythos. Its use was similarly pejorative and now commonly refers to its Aristotelian sense as a plot point or to a collective mythology. The term is distinguished from didactic literature such as fables. Main characters in myths are usually gods, demigods or supernatural humans, however, many exceptions or combinations exist, as in the Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid. Myths are often endorsed by rulers and priests and are linked to religion or spirituality
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