In 2016, Amy Fleming, in an article for The Guardian, titled: “Why money really does grows on trees.” explores the diverse dependencies humans have on forestry, specifically in urban cities, where 50% of the world’s population resides.
Amy thoroughly examines the ecological, socio-economic and psychological findings in relation to the impact of tree populations in our cities, along with the sociological effects on the environment that we’re facing in today’s world.
In Amy’s research she asserts that trees are financially and ecologically interwoven with areas such as our clean air supply, reduced flooding and “air-born pollutants” (Fleming) Trees also significantly decrease air conditioning usage, where she states “[t]rees can cool cities by between 2C to 8C.” (Fleming).
We also see through her findings, when there are more trees in cities, anaylitical studies have shown a decrease in depression and anxiety, an “improve[d] health perception” (qtd. Berman) and astounding correlations between trees and healthy babies as well as reduced “mortality from circulatory diseases.” (qtd. Mitchell)
These vital connections that Amy so thoroughly highlights reveals the astronomical consequences to human beings in our urban communities, if we do not proactively tackle threats like “disease and shrinking municipal budgets.”(qtd. Jones) We must do everything we can to educate, learn and honour our trees for our future and generations to come.
Fleming, Amy. “Why money really does grows on trees.”The Guardian, 12 October, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/oct/12/ importance-urban-forests-money-grow-trees
Hi I’m Che Zugazaga, I am a single mother to a beautiful four year old boy Brady. We currently reside on the North Shore in an area called Blueridge; that is off the flank of Mount Seymour and connected to Lynn Valley. Throughout my twenties, I transitioned through a variety of completely new and innovative industries while working with renowned local print company, Metropolitan Fine Printers. Although I was formally in Project Management and Account Executive positions,I found myself constantly observing and inserting myself in to the creative departments. While working along side successful Art Directors, Artists and Designers I began to reflect on my own future and seriously consider a potential integral shift in my career path. This September I graduated with an Diploma in Graphic Design. In the next four years,I hope to capitalize on all the fantastic resources and education that Capilano has to offer, to provide a better life for myself and my son.
John Waterhouse has been called Pre-Raphaelite, but I think calling him a Romantic Classicist is perhaps more accurate. He had the Northerner’s love of legend and mystery, but his Italian birth lent him a warm personality to his renderings of classical myths, with people rendered as if they were superhuman beings. His work was no doubt influenced thematically by Pre-Raphaelites like Millais and Rossetti, among others.
Some of the Pre-Raphaelites, like Burne-Jones, managed to fix the image of pre-Raphaelitism in a mold of its own making – that of the long-haired girl in the long dress. But these girls are anonymous in most of his work and they lack the qualities of real people. Waterhouse’s paintings on the other hand, are sensitive and warm-blooded: they are actually the living models of his studio, with their own youth and their combination of modesty and sexuality imbued with the painter’s creative imagination. His characters reflect the perennial quality of the Greek legends, a strong Southern softness akin to Botticelli’s in which beauty is shared equally by good and evil and the only human differences are those of youth and age. There is no monsters in Waterhouse’s story-telling as in Dürer and even in some of the other Pre-Raphaelites and English Neoclassicists. He brought a refined sense of composition and the instant for the moment in the story at which everything seems to stands still. His art has a timeless quality, to a certain extent in accord with the fashionable taste both in his period and ours
John William was born in Rome and spent weeks of free wanderings and dwelling in Italian cities and country in his early years. He continuously returned during his life to experience anew the atmosphere of his boyhood. His father, William Waterhouse, was a Yorkshireman, an artist who practised with moderate success in prosperous Victorian society. Young William seemed to inherit his father’s talents. His mother, Isabella Mackenzie, and her younger sister Jane both exhibited portraits at the Royal Academy. At school in Yorkshire, a facility for drawing did not immediately prompt a career as an artist. It was a working apprenticeship in his father’s studio which eventually led to his entry to the Royal Academy Schools. His initial application to the Royal Academy Schools was rejected – specimens of drawings were to be submitted with the application and his drawing was rejected. He then decided to apply as a sculptor, submitting a model in clay and he was accepted in the Sculpture School in 1870.
It was the influence of a painter, F. R. Pickersgill, a Royal Academy member and his sponsor in the Academy, that was able to return the young Waterhouse to the field of painting.
Early Career
Early exhibition at the Winter Exhibition of the Society of British Artists in 1872 got Waterhouse noticed among the few whose pictures were accepted for their various qualities.
The following year the SBA’s Summer Exhibition included The Unwelcome Companion: A Street Scene in Cairo (1873). He used his friends and relatives, including his sister Jessie, as models. The Victorian compulsion to tell a story is quite obvious. He was developing the ability to compose a satisfying picture, but he had not yet acquired the combination of an appropriate setting with the pose and gesture of the figure which within a few years was to make him an outstanding illustrator of legends.
Some of these early pictures have no story to tell: they owe their charm to the sensitive painting of the female figure, as in La Fileuse, The spinner (1872) and An Eastern Reminiscence (1874). His paintings, however, continued to appeal by their individual subject matter. His favorite model at this time may well have been his sister. It should be recalled that all this took place while Waterhouse was still a student.
The Dudley Gallery’s Winter Exhibition of 1874 included Waterhouse’s In the Perystile. It showed the next major influence on him – that of Lawrence Alma-Tadema, who had settled in London with a European reputation. However, Waterhouse consistently painted on a larger scale than Alma-Tadema. His brushwork is bolder, his sunlight casts harsher shadows and his story paintings are more dramatic. Alma-Tadema’s careful research and the rendering of architectural interiors with their figures in classical dress were an inspiration to many students.
Waterhouse’s first Royal Academy exhibit, however, also in 1874 diverged from the classical theme and showed considerable depth of feeling. Sleep and his Half Brother Death relates quite certainly to family tragedy: his mother and his two younger brothers had succumbed to tuberculosis.
Waterhouse’s returned to Italy for periods of travel and study between 1876 and 1883 and produced a number of charming pictures, showing his interest in colour and the play of light. Typical is the picture of Two Little Italian Girls by a Village (1875). However, his thoughts were ever with the beings of history and mythology rather than with fisher folk and farmers. Examples of pictures of this period are After the Dance and A Sick Child brought into the Temple of Aesculapius (1877) which he exhibited at the Royal Academy exhibition of 1877.
No doubt the inspiration of those works came largely from Alma-Tadema, but the differences not merely in size but in depth of subject are already apparent, and Waterhouse finally decided to leave the train of the famous master at a peak of his own achievement. The 1882 Diogenes (82x53in), precise in its rendering of architecture and the texture of the marble linked to the figures of the girls so unaffectedly posed represent a perfect composition.
It was then that Waterhouse turned in 1883 to the old Empire for his first major exercise in history with The Favourites of the Emperor Honorius (46x79in). The emperor and his pets – the ‘favourites’ – occupy a space of their own, defined by the darkness of the carpet and his garments, The central figure of the attendant is stiffened in posture, turned away, reduced to the scale of the councillors, who wait tensely, with eyes anxiously fixed on the emperor. The moment of stillness captured on the canvas is a clear mark to Waterhouse’s artistic genius.
Of this period are also: Consulting the Oracle (47x78in), which established Waterhouse as a classical painter, with use of classical, geometrical structures of Greek temples, and St Eulalia (74x46in). The whole force of the picture is centered in the pathetic dignity of the outstretched figure, beautiful in its helplessness and serenity. The potent and effective simplicity, its direct and touching language needs no interpreter.
Later Career
Waterhouse was elected to Associate of the Royal Academy in 1885 and in 1893 he was proposed for full Membership. In 1895 he was elected as full Academician. Waterhouse was now firmly established in the ranks of the Royal Academy and in favour with both critics and public. Hylas and the Nymphs belongs to this period, also Pandora, which appeared in the Academy exhibition of 1896. The following year he showed Mariana in the South at the New Gallery, a haunting picture of Tennyson’s desolate maiden. Waterhouse’s lovely girl conveys all the heartfelt message of the lines: ‘Low on her knees herself she cast’, And on the liquid mirror glow’d/The perfection of her face’.
The Rose Bower, Penelope and the Suitors,The Sorceress and The Danaides are some of the latest Waterhouse’s works.
The patronage of the Henderson family, the financier and his brothers, was perhaps the most important of Waterhouse’s career. Portraits of members of the Henderson family: Lady Violet Henderson, Miss Margaret Henderson and Mrs A. P. Henderson are witness of the genuine friendship of Waterhouse with the Henderson family.
Waterhouse’s paintings have a virtually universal appeal: they are inhabited by beautiful people and recall well-known stories of personal situations. In spite of his Italian birth and sympathies, his paintings are strongly English in spirit. Over and above the question of style, is Waterhouse’s narrative ability. He was in tune with the tales he chose as to extend their literary imagery by his own invention filling the spaces of our imagination in a manner so natural that we feel it could hardly be otherwise.
Sources
“John William Waterhouse – Style and Technique’. www.artble.com
The Teresian School Source: http://paraviajarproject.blogspot.com/2016/03/barcelona-nick-j.html
During the second half of the 19th century, Barcelona was at its economical and social peak. The old part of the city, surrounded by walls and bounded by the sea, had become too small to accommodate the large buildings that were being put up by the new emerging society. In 1857 a decision was taken to annex neighbouring towns, which until then had been summer destinations where the middle class had constructed enormous mansions that still stand today.
Casa Vincens Source: https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2019/06/casa-vicens/
1878 marks the beginnings of Modernism in Spain when Catalan architect Domenech i Montaner published an article in the Catalan newspaper La Renaixensa entitled “The Quest for a National Architecture” where he expressed the need for Catalonia to develop its own individual style. From that moment on, buildings were constructed based on history yet characterized by the personality of the architect who transformed classical notions into new architectural interpretations. Casa Vincens (1878-1880), designed by Antoni Gaudí, is an example of this movement.
If indeed the year of 1878 was key, it was not until 1880 that the Modernist style came into its own. The 1888 Universal Exhibition held in Barcelona provided a platform for promoting and exhibiting the artistic novelties that would not take long to spread throughout society as a whole.
The Barcelona Exhibition served to demonstrate the power of the middle class, who believed they were fulfilling the dream of modernization thanks to the economic prosperity they had attained. After the Exhibition, the nobility and especially the middle class wanted to move to the Eixample, the new urban development space created by tearing down the walls of the city in order to gain more space, where they would take residence and commission the construction of spectacular works of architecture.
Due to the socio-political conditions in Catalonia between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century the Moderniste movement reached level unlike anywhere else in Spain. Notwithstanding, it would be an error to assume that Modernism solely took place in Catalonia, as it also played an important and varied role in Spanish cities a Madrid, Valencia, Zaragoza and Melilla, among others.
The Teresian College Source: https://www.skyscrapercity.com/threads/mijn-gaudi-tour.1454769/#post-85122212
Casa Mila. Source: Source: https://www.barcelo.com/guia-turismo/en/barcelona/things-to-do/casa-mila/
Since 1906 Eugeni d’Ors, Catalan writer, essayist, journalist, philosopher and art critic, pioneered the term Noucentism through publication of a collection of writings published between 1907 and 1911 that set the aesthetic and cultural ideals advocated by the new movement, characterized by an adamant rejection of anything related to Modernisme. Despite these dates, however, Modernisme cannot be placed within an exact time period given that works displaying a distinct Modernista style continued to be built after 1906, including Antoni Gaudí renowned Casa Milá.
In this artistic milieu was Antoni Gaudí born in Reus, Tarragona, Spain in 1852. Son of a working-class family, he manifested his passion for art from a very young age. In 1873 he began his architectural studies at the Barcelona School of Architecture. The need for financial means to pay for his studies led him to work as a drafts in various workshops. Through his years as a student, Gaudi executed a number of designs and worked with renowned architects such as Francesc de Paula del Villar whom he aided in designing the sanctum and apse of the Montserrat monastery. He finished his architectural education in Madrid, finishing his studies in 1876. From then on he would design and build a vast number of works. Ever since his early years as a professional he demonstrated the attributes of a well-rounded artist. His are works as diverse as lamppost in Barcelona, furniture design, wrought iron, wood and glass display cabinets for gloves in the Paris Exhibition and a flower stand.
Teresian School Entrance. Source: http://www.gaudidesigner.com/es/autres-realisations-colegio-de-las-teresianas-1888-1890—barcelona—a.gaudi_575.html
Gaudí’s extravagant style was surprisingly well received by Catalan society. In fact the architect undertook commissions for the Catalan bourgeoisie (Vincens, Calvet, Batlló and Milá and in some cases recently ennobled families such as the Güellls) who accepted his creations with a certain stoicism, as did the masses of Chistian devotees in their support of the colossal Sagrada Familia temple in Barcelona. It is also surprising that some of his commissions would take Gaudí to places so distant from his Catalan personality deep into Spain, such as Comillas (Santander). Leon or Astorga. However, they all had some sort of Catalan connection; in Astorga, for instance, the project was commissioned by the Catalan bishop that presided over the diocese of Leon.
The Terisian College, Gaudis first major work. Source: https://irbarcelona.org/barcelona-famous-buildings/collegi-teresianes/
Antoni Gaudí who always practised his profession independently and never worked as a public servant, never received any awards or honors by any academy, nor did he participate in any political organization. He was a magnificent artist, unclassifiable and always astonishing who exercised his craft with an extreme precision, a result of a fevered imagination. It is the result of this imagination that, even today, almost 100 years after his death, he continues to be regarded as one of the main attraction of Barcelona, the city that contains the most and best examples of Antoni Gaudí’s spectacular and creative work.
Casa Batlló. Source: https://www.timeout.com/barcelona/art/gaudi-barcelona-nine-of-the-architects-greatest-hits
Not given to writing about his esthetic preferences, he is known to have published only one article in 1881. During the late 1870s he met Eusebi Güell, who over the years would become his perfect patron, giving him total freedom in designing and executing the projects he was commissioned. Gaudi’s connection with both the bourgeoisie and the Catholic Church were of paramount importance for his long career, whose major masterpieces are a reflection of those relationships. His religious education and close friendship with clergymen and bishops from various cities helped create an impeccable Christian image of him.
In 1882, the first stone of the Sagrada Familia temple was laid. At that time, the young Gaudi was not yet associated with the project, although one year later he was commissioned to perform a study of the columns in the crypt. The first author of the project was Francesc de Paula del Villar, Gaudi’s teacher in the School of Architecture. Del Villar supervised the construction as far as the capitals of the crypt, after which abandoned the post due to a disagreement with the foreman over technical aspects of the project. On 3 November 1883 Gaudi was named the new supervisor of the construction of the Sagrada Familia. The young architect was barely thirty years old and would stay with this project until the end of his life.
The temple, when finished, will have 18 bell towers: one representing Christ, one for the Virgin Mary, four for the evangelists and 12 for the apostles.
Antoni Gaudí who always practised his profession independently and never worked as a public servant, never received any awards or honors by any academy, nor did he participate in any political organization. He was a magnificent artist, unclassifiable and always astonishing who exercised his craft with an extreme precision, a result of a fevered imagination. It is the result of this imagination that, even today, more than 100 years after his death, it continues to be regarded as one of the main attraction of Barcelona, the city that contains the most and best examples of Antoni Gaudí’s spectacular and creative work. Gaudí rarely drew detailed plans of his works, instead preferring to create them as three-dimensional scale models and moulding the details as he conceived them.
Inside the Sagrada Familia. Source: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/sagrada-familia
Presented is a handcrafted 11″ x 14.25″ Zine (the same aspect ratio as a 8.5″ x 11″). This 6 page, handmade zine discusses the typefaces Johnston Sans & Gill Sans from the 19th century (1913-1930). One cannot present one typeface without mentioning the other. These two typeface are closely interlinked. Johnston, a master calligrapher of the Arts and Crafts Movement was commissioned in 1913 by Frank Pick for Londons Underground Railway.
The purpose of this commission was to assist in the legibility of boards and prevent overcrowding in the rapid underground transit system. This typeface is still today the longest standing corporate typeface in history. It was only introduced with lower case letters and became public access till recently.
Eric Gill, a pupil of Johnston’s, was deeply inspired and influenced by Johnston’s and his work. In 1927 Gill was commissioned to create a sans-serif type that could compete with the up and coming Futura typeface. The defining difference between Johnston Sans & Gill Sans is their original application; as Gill Sans was designed for letterpress. The two sans-serif humanist typefaces do often get mixed up, Gill Sans can often overshadow Johnston, both typefaces are still used for different railway systems in the United Kingdom. Although, Edward Johnston is accredited with the “first humanist sans-serif font” that was based on classical roman capitals.
Edward Johnston, Master Caligrapher source:https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/mar/10/edward-johnston-london-underground-typeface-100-years-ditchling-sussex-eric-gillJohnston Sans, source: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/mar/10/edward-johnston-london-underground-typeface-100-years-ditchling-sussex-eric-gillEric Gills early designs, source: https://medium.com/@glennf/that-london-tube-typeface-look-again-8beaf0d89abb
“Johnston, Edward (1872–1944).” The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Graphic Design and Designers, Alan Livingston, and Isabella Livingston, Thames & Hudson, 3rd edition, 2012.
“Johnston, Edward (1874-1944).” The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Design Since 1900, Guy Julier, Thames & Hudson, 2nd edition, 2004. Credo Reference,
“Gill, Eric (1882–1940).” The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Graphic Design and Designers, Alan Livingston, and Isabella Livingston, Thames & Hudson, 3rd edition, 2012. Credo Reference,
Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664) was born in Badajoz, Spain; he apprenticed with Pedro Diaz de Villanueva (1614-16). No paintings of his master have survived making it impossible to appreciate his influence on Zurbarán’s painting techniques and style.
Zurbarán, a contemporary of Diego Velazquez but in contrast with the court painter, Zurbarán remained all his life a provincial painter and par excellence painter of religious life. His clients included Dominicans, Jeronims and Carthusian monks. He had very few royal commissions. His style is defined as a Caravaggesque naturalism and tenebrism (extreme chiaroscuros, great contrast between light and dark).
His artistic career is divided into two different periods: the first period, characterized by tenebrism and an ascetic spiritualism. In the second period, during the middle of the century, delicate and soft forms take prominence, reflection of the Seville School of the period. This phase coincides with a crisis in his painting career with few commissions from his habitual clientele. This crisis also coincides with Esteban Murillo’s successful career as a popular religious painter.
The combination of realism and religious sensibility relates the art of Zurbarán to the practical mysticism of the Jesuits. It was a style that lent itself well to portraiture and still life, but his most characteristic expression is found in his religious subjects. He uses naturalism more convincingly than other exponents for the expression of intense religious devotion. He renders traditional personages: apostles, saints and monks with heads rendered almost as portraits and sculptural modeling, with emphasis on the minute detail of their dress. At the end of his artistic career the figures become more idealized and less solid in form and the expression of religious emotions is a bit tinged with sentimentality. His pictorial art production is popular with monastic orders.
Citations:
Tiziana Frati,- ‘Zurbarán’. Clasicos del Arte, vol.17 , Editorial Noguera, Madrid 1984.
Encycloedia Britannica vol. 23 ‘Zurbarán, Francisco de.
Exposición Zurbarán en el III centenario de su muerte (1964)
Christian Europe from the medieval period to early modern Europe had broad orders of social hierarchy that divided society members into estates which defined the social position of persons within society. They were called estates of the realm or three-estates. The best known system is the French Ancien Regime (Old Regime), a three-estate system which categorized society into groups based on socioeconomic factors like wealth, income, race, education, ethnicity, gender and occupation. The system was used until the French Revolution (1789-1799). The monarchy in France included the king, Louis XVI, and the queen, Marie Antoinette. The system was made up of clergy (The First Estate), the nobility (The Second Estate), peasants, bourgeoisie and urban workers (The Third Estate), the Commoners.
Portrait of Louis XVI by Antoine-François Callet source: https://historycollection.com/16-notable-people-guillotined-in-the-french-revolution/3/
France’s involvement in the American Revolution, along with extravagant spending practices by King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette left the country on the verge of bankruptcy. War and debt broke the back of the monarchy. By 1788 the French government was bankrupt and a new land tax was proposed to be paid by all. Louis XVI called the Estates General, first since 1614, in hope of helping to advise him on the economical and agricultural crisis that France was facing. The voting system was by Estate and not by heads. Therefore, the deputies of the Third Estate, realized that in any attempt at reform they would be outvoted by the two privileged orders, the clergy and the nobility. They asked the King to allow a heads vote and he denied the request.
The Third Estate did not agree with king’s proposal which was to impose higher taxes on them. The king dissolved the meeting and closed the hall to prevent any further meetings. The Third Estate already paid most of the taxes: tithes to the Church, tax on goods brought to the city, poll tax, income tax, salt tax, land tax, and feudal dues for use of local manor’s winepress, oven, etc. Its deputies decided to call themselves the National Assembly and claimed the right to speak to the nation. They intended to make laws without royal approval. The king closed the hall where the National Assembly was to meet, so they met on a tennis court. On June 1789, the members of the French Third Estate took the Tennis Court Oath, vowing not to separate, and to reassemble wherever circumstances required, until the constitution of the kingdom was established. In the face of solidarity of the Third Estate, King Louis XVI relented and ordered the clergy and the nobility to join with the Third Estate in the National Assembly. An attempt at counter-revolution let them formulate their claims virtually based on privilege and social status. Mirabeau, an ex-noble, told the King that he was a stranger in the Assembly and did not have the right to speak there.
It was an important revolutionary act that displayed the belief that political authority came from the nation’s people and not from the monarchy. This was a pivotal event in the French Revolution. Estates-General ceased to exist and became the National Assembly two years later. Renamed National Constituent Assembly (1789).
French Revolution, 1795 is a painting by Granger. Source: https://fineartamerica.com/featured/1-french-revolution-1795-granger.html
Burdened by heavy taxes imposed by the First and Second Estates and continuous grievances against royal absolutism created a fertile soil for a spontaneous social upheaval that culminated with the storming of the Bastille; a hated prison in Paris where people were routinely held without charges. The fall of the Bastille spread the revolution to the provincial towns and the countryside. This event coincided with peasant attacks to nobles’ castles and general disorder.
Portrait of Marie Antoinette e prisoner in the Temple Tower (attributed to Alexandre Kucharski, c. 1792) Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Antoinette
Poor weather and harvests, and the withholding by police of public grain supplies from the royal stores in 1773-74 provoked a large-scale revolt, known as the Flour War. The price of bread in Paris had increased beyond the ability of many of the poorer residents to buy it. The situation subsided following wheat price controls imposed by Turgot, Louis XVI’s Controller-General of Finances (before the supply recovered), and the deployment of military troops. The combination of a bread shortage and high prices angered many French women, who relied on bread sales to make a living. Paris women’s initially stormed the city hall and then proceeded to march to Versailles, the site of the government. The ultimate goal was to bring King Louis XVI back to Paris where he would be responsible to the people, and to the reforms that had begun to be passed earlier. Thus, they would march to the Palace of Versailles and demand that the king respond. The king was finally convinced to appear before the crowd. The crowd accompanied the royal family back to Paris, where the king and queen and their court took up residence at the Tuileries Palace. Two weeks later, the National Assembly also moved to Paris. All feudal privileges were formally abolished by the Constituent Assembly and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen was declared its’ formal manifesto.
Title: Marat Assassinated by Jaques-Louis David Source: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/marat-assassinated/7QGjl9R141MCBw?hl=en-GB(more…)
presented below is a 12” x 18″ gouache landscape painting from a photographic reference of our choice. I personally chose a reference that showed a cityscape and gave the feeling of isolation, as a reflection on the year 2020. Because the image was originally vertical and smaller than the size specified in the brief, I used the gridding system from our first assignment to make sure proportions were correct when resizing.
What is known as the “Protestant Reformation Era” in 16th century Europe, is typically attributed to Martin Luther (1483 – 1546). But prior to Luther there were pre-reformers that started to question the Papacy, in particular John Wycliffe from Yorkshire England (1300 -1384 ) and Jan Hus from Husinec, Bohemia (1369-1415). John Wycliffe was a highly respected theologians that had studied at Oxford, Europe’s most well respected University at the time. He questioned the Roman Catholic Church and their governing power. He started to identify the churches sense of divine rights and discrepancies between their behaviour and Bible scripture, in fact Whycliffe is accredited with being the first to translate the Bible with the intention to provide public access to the literature. Whycliffe fought against the Papacy and had a firm belief that there should be a divide between church and state. Although he later retired in his former years his teachings continued to spread throughout Europe and a following was later developed with the help of a priest in Prague.
John Hus (1369-1415) was a Preacher at University of Prague and “leader of the Czech reform party”(Cohn-Sherbok, Lavinia). At that time, he had students coming from Oxford University, showcasing the works of Whycliffe. His controversial teachings intrigued Hus, and he continued the fire of church reform and identifying the injustices of selling indulgences, while having to live in exile for his heretic nature.
During the Middle Ages the clergy were authorized by the Catholic Church to absolve penitents from the guilt of his sins and from punishment in the inferno of the hereafter, but it did not absolve them from doing penance on earth as a result of their sins. Indulgences did just that, they were sold by the Church so the sinner would not have to do penance, at the same time diminishing the time period that the sinner was to suffer in purgatory for remission of his sins. It was a well thought policy by the Church to increase its coffers. In 1414 Hus was invited to the Council of Constant, a Ecumenical council, where his attendance was only secured under the promise of “safe conduct” from the Emperor. Three weeks later he was imprisoned and acclaimed the “greatest Heretic of all history”. Shortly after he was tried and burned at the stake.
Martin Luther, Oil on Canvas by Lucas Cranach the Elder
The Beginning of Protestant Reformers
Luther continues and accelerates what has been instigated by Whycliffe and Huss, he starts a denomination in the church. One of the reasons Luther was able to progress was due in great part to his defender the Elector of Saxony, Frederick III, who sponsors and protects Luther. Martin Luther so much decried the selling of indulgences as he did the libertine lifestyle he found among the princes of the Church: Cardinals, bishops and other high members of the clergy when visiting Italy. He opposed the Holy See’s spiritual power to remit sins and soon his religious ideas moved him away from the official tenets of the Church. This brought him to nail his “95 Theses” on the door of the Castle Church at Wittenberg on November 1, 1517. The idea that salvation could be reached through faith and divine grace only and the primacy of the Bible rather than Church officials as the ultimate religious authority were part of those Theses. Their impact transformed for ever the spiritual/religious scene of the times and offered the believer a new interpretation of Christian theology, until then monopolized by the Catholic Church. His unsuccessful attempt to reform the Church created the ground for a new Christian faith.
Throughout his life he published numerous books and tracts: ‘A Treatise of Christian Liberty’, ‘On Monastic Wows’, ‘Dialogue’ among others, that the Church publicly burned after finding their content heretic and disrespectful to the Holy See. He established the tenets of the Lutheran faith. He ordained the first Lutheran minister in 1525. Luther influenced new religious faiths; Lutherans, Calvinism, Hussite.
The Wittenberg Altarpiece; Martin Luther preaching in the parish church of Wittenberg. (more…)
The Rise of the Worlds Worst Villains and the Subsequent Immigration of Europes most Prolific Artists
Featured below is a mood board and a blog board both in made in Invision; including both written and visual references depicting key historical events. This project starts with the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and goes on the explain how immigration and European influence changed architecture and graphic design in United States, forever. The intention of this project was to best convey my understanding of how three different subjects interconnected in this time. I felt I did well in this project, because I made significant efforts to understand how the Spanish Civil War led to the devastation of WW2; then I was able to determine, in my opinion, the most impactful changes in the U.S surrounding architecture and graphic design that came out of the political unrest and warfare.
