Blue Truck, Red State: Talking Paintings

Showing posts with label Talking Paintings. Show all posts

Thursday, May 25, 2023

Art Works: Talking Paintings No. 1

This handsome face seems startlingly modern, don't you agree?

The first of a series of amusing commentaries by Francois Rousseau, the witty, erudite proprietor of Men Portraits, the link to which can always be found in the sidebar of this blog. This one is about the portrait of Jacopo Boncompagni by Scipio Pulzone, 1574, with some pertinent observations on his braghetta - er, um, that's codpiece to you.

Alas, the commentary is all in French, but the captions are in English, so give it a try.

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Prayer for Peace

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, harmony; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that I may seek not so much to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

Churches say that the expression of love in a heterosexual monogamous relationship includes the physical, the touching, embracing, kissing, the genital act - the totality of our love makes each of us grow to become increasingly godlike and compassionate. If this is so for the heterosexual, what earthly reason have we to say that it is not the case with the homosexual?

It is a perversion if you say to me that a person chooses to be homosexual. You must be crazy to choose a way of life that exposes you to a kind of hatred. It's like saying you choose to be black in a race-infected society.

If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn't worship that God.

--Archbishop Desmond Tutu