2

And getting to the biblical equation of the number seven in relation to John the Baptist. Albrecht Durer made a series of the Apocalypse (1498-1511), one of them including The Whore of Babylon and St. John Devours the Book/ The "Strong Angel". I would not like to presuppose the interpretation by Durer but all would obtain the number seven. The seven-headed whore of Babylon is represented by a seven-headed beast ridden like a chariot with a divine goddess holding a sacred chalice to the divine feasters. Some of the misinterpretation of St. John the Baptist on feast day is nominated by a virgin holding a head of St. John. This probably does not present to any of the Lutheran Church of Germany a sacrificial head of St. John the Baptist. Given where this beast is nominated to have resided, they would only have sacrificed a sheep or a cow.

1

The view of the Florence Baptistery (Battistero di San Giovanni) was a nice introduction to the Martelli Saint John. The early Christian mosaics for the patron Saint, Saint John the Baptist, were a holy ascension to the God in Heaven, taking the patron Saint, Mars, through a process of equation to current Christian philosophy and the religion of the day. A Christian darkness was transported through to a lightness and the love of Christ.

A Divinity in Man

A Divinity in Man

I have been blessed, for the second time, with visiting one of my favourite sculptures, the Donatello and Desiderio da Settignano, The Martelli Saint John the Baptist, ca. 1440-1457, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence. This very special opportunity also allowed a further view of the other Donatello's and Verrocchio in the same room, having studied and made reference to some of the pieces in the first installment of this project (Embroidering the Constellations). The first visit to the Bargello museum occurred nine years prior and it was great to view the Pitti Palace, too, this time around, to catch up with several of the paintings referred to in the first essay. The view of Martelli Saint John was not a disappointment and enabled the third dimension that is lost to the memory and imagination when viewing photographs to be equated. Viewing art works and revisiting cities is always influenced by what pathway has preceded the visit. This visit was via Venice, Rovereto and Padua so the refinement of Donatello and Settignano was less obvious with Giotto, Messina and Bellini as their background. Therefore, following the Christian pathway gave the reinterpretation of Christ through the patron Saint of Florence, St. John the Baptist, the blessing necessary.

  

Page 117

Giovanni Pisano

Time is something that often does not feel like it moves or progresses. Time should equal God but often seems not to equal empathy. There are people who want to travel on a journey to the heights and then people who only stand still. One wonders how life could be stimulating for them without any focus or way forwards. Happenings are often misconstrued as has been the case with philosophy from the beginning. Always people appear to disagree with one another and often some concepts are so unchallenged that wars and certain death have been the result. You would feel by now that we could possibly have progressed to an understanding for God but certain ideas challenge your notion of being and stand still. Therefore the time it takes for a revolution in the general thinking of man to take place some physical ideas have disappeared and we seem to have to start all over again with empathy. You would imagine this to just be an equation of the love felt in certain peoples hearts but often this love appears to dissipate. Gods will must be to reevaluate time so as to go on.

Time also equals stardust for those blessed.

Embroidering the Constellations

by Nicole Page-Smith

  

Page 116

Luca Signorelli, The Damned (detail), c. 1499, 

San Brizio Chapel, Orvieto Cathedral

Of the succession of feeling towards circling one feels that fiends from Hell as in the Luca Signorelli altar in Orvieto, are more welcome in certain parts of the world but never should have gone there. One feels these people are God's equation of man before the fall and this would have been not that man was evil but that man needed to find God in the apple tree. God needs people to be civil to one another otherwise we may as well not bother. Hell demons are something not for God but because God needs you to find happiness in life and Heaven in what you pursue.

Page 115

Albrecht Durer

Roundness is something often thought about but more about the size of weight over mass. This is somewhere to take our brains but not our bodies. So, this is an equation about the body but not for the body. This circles right back to Settignano and Saint John. Whereby we could not really discuss his skull shape next to his body capacity as this would be too close to the Lord. We could happen upon this idea if we were not thinking about body masses but more about size of the world over the size of the universes. God would not want us knowing too much too quickly.

Page 114

Michelangelo, The Torment of Saint Anthony, c. 1487-1488

Slow motion would feel like nothing ever happened on earth. Happening is a word felt by people who have experienced something of use. There are threads of a divine embroidery that God would usually want us to feel but not necessarily touch or see. These are used to mend a broken heart to close to God. Circles are not just flat plains, they do equal the equator. They also do move. But different circles have different purposes. Some would be to equate a circumference. Others would be to equate the surface area. Circles are for special purposes and do move for some people but not others. 

Martin Schongauer, 

The Man of Sorrows with the Virgin Mary and St. John the Evangelist, 

c. 1475

Page 113

Guido Mazzoni, The Lamentation over the Dead Christ, 

c. 1492, Chiesa di Sant'Anna dei Lombardi, Napoli

Adam and Eve were born from each other under a star. Eve was born from Adam. Her being came out of his leg, a different form of birth. Budding is the same. Something like propagating roses. Threads of silk are also extracted this way to allow the silk worm to change into a butterfly. There ascension to earth was via God and allowed them to find Hell. Another equation was necessary as the garden of earthly delights could only give them Heaven. Sometimes without an equation there is no true seeing of an experience. The tree of knowledge was somewhere to be experienced in the heart of man and does not have to be revealed. To find God one has to be aware of evil. However, this does not mean you have to be evil. Often people are tempted or tested by God but God knows we are only human and here to learn, even the most heavenly people make mistakes or those closest to God. God is there for the human race to make an equation about themselves and allow this knowledge to be useful and ascended to the Heavens.

Guido Mazzoni, Maddalena, 

c. 1476-1477, detail of the Lamentation, 

Chiesa di Santa Maria degli Angeli, Busseto

  

Page 112

Guido Mazzoni, Adoration of the Child, c. 1485-1489

Si non rogas intelligo. ("If you don't ask me, I understand." St. Augustine) The progression of thinking from birth to death feels like somewhere that is not often contemplated, maybe with some people through a lack of memory. Often memory fuels a particular changed moment almost when you finally realize something or premise God enlightens your being with a golden ascension few people obtain. Our unconscious memory, through dreaming, also feels us clinging to a way of seeing that is reversed and questioned and then thrown back at us. This development creates a progression in consciousness that enables you to then question time and its ability to change us. Often time is reversed in dreams or feels equated in the reverse order to conscious thinking. When people try to regain a memory of their dreaming life it takes a different state of consciousness. Drawing from a very different place in your psyche and one wonders why patterns of consciousness emerge from this state. What is absorbed consciously is to be reflected in the unconscious or vice versa and creates inner refractions that take you to a language that few tend to trespass. This unconscious language feels like a communication with the self that is beyond all time, from an eternity that God holds in our hearts. When you try to investigate this, you get to a point where the relationship between the language we learn and the language already there in our hearts are two distinct separate things so, therefore, this new language or only language of the self, emerges.

Guido Mazzoni

   

Page 111

Sassetta, 

St. Francis Kneeling before Christ on the Cross,

c. 1437-1444

So, time immemorial would equal eternity or God. And a progression of thoughts would equal our existence. We exist for God to allow us to travel freely through time and then to evaluate the experience. You can also evaluate the past to reach the present or the future. There are some of us who think beyond grace or the gracing of God with an activity and then there are those who do not possess the knowledge nor acquire it through learning or are even able to process the thinking of anything complex. We are all here for a purpose, even though this is often shrouded in mystery and can take you your whole lifetime to understand what the purpose is. Time is often equated differently with different individuals. When there is a progression of thinking, time exists and when we regress to another state or even stay the same, time appears to stand still. The journey it takes to transgress to the thinking necessary to progress is not something that is easily obtained and requires a vigorous amount of time and mental strength.

Sassetta (detail)

Page 110

Willem de Pannemaker

So, God feels like an equation for an infinite understanding of eternal time, set amongst the present and the now to be re-evealuating the hours of the day with the days of the week and the years to come with all that is past. It is hard to stretch our brain back to where time may have begun and then forwards to the end of time. We are here for the cycle of our lives so, this in itself gives us an equation of time with a beginning and an end, as the life of any living thing is equated. However, to even drift our thinking to the incomprehensible or as far as you could possibly imagine time to exist before you hit the unconscious infinity or the stardust of the unconscious is perhaps scary for some people but for other people would equal the heavens or God. This you feel when God wants your thoughts to travel to him, he will protect you from venturing too far so as to remain conscious of him and time immemorial. The concept of the eternal feels as though we loop the past to the present as if it joins back up in a circle connecting the past to the future by a golden thread.

Federico Barocci

Page 109

Hans Memling, Christ at the Column, c. 1485-1490

Our thoughts are with those of us who cannot get to God. God exists in all human hearts no matter how evil they are. Someone needs to know what goes horribly awry. There are those who extend their welcome with God. And then those who God praises. Some people who are participating in the work God wants them to, do suffer from evil people who cannot understand why they too do not want to participate in their evil doings. The sacred people do not understand why you would want to be evil. You would have to be fairly below average intelligence to think an evil pathway would be the way forwards, however God would not want them anywhere near his divine work as all they would do is be a nuisance to God. Why dance for Satan? When the only reward is an evil pathway, premise Satan deliberately could ask for their souls, if they have them. The rest would not be worth having in Gods divine house. They must be human but God would see them as fiends.

Hans Memling, 

Triptych of Earthly Vanity and Divine Salvation, 

c. 1485, Musee des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg