New Legacy Project Part 10: Pagan Roots

Dear Friends and Fans,

This will be my final post of the year 2024. I am happy to report that 27 out of 36 chapters are polished enough to show to a publisher. The rest should be done by New Year’s Eve. Each chapter now has an average of 3-4 illustrations, totaling over 100 works of art and photographs of events and people. I am looking to Dorion Sagan, my editor and occasional ghostwriter, who has had many of his books published, to advise me on the next steps for getting the book published.

The real take-away from all this work is not just the product that I hope to eventually hold in my hand and which I hope you, my friends and fans, will want to buy a copy of. The real prize has been a new comprehension of how my life and artwork have had their place in the world that I happened to be born into. I feel as if I am seeing my life and artwork through the reverse end of a telescope, i.e. small yet not completely insignificant in the big scheme of things, and thus both humbling and satisfying. Recently my friend, Asadour Santourian, gifted me a copy of Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve, which is an account of how an Italian Humanist scholar and scribe, Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1489) re-discovered in 1414 the only known extant copy of the most famous ancient Roman poem: Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), ca. 55 BCE. Lucretius had been the student of the philosopher Epicurus, and reflects Epicurus’ vision in the poem. All other copies of De Rerum Natura had been lost during the centuries that followed the disintegration of the Roman Empire until Poggio found it and recognized it in a medieval monastery. By having it copied and then sending the copy to his Humanist friends in Florence, Poggio helped spark the European Renaissance. Over the following decades blind faith was replaced by reason, superstition by empirical knowledge, and fear of sin and shame by enjoyment of pleasure and beauty.

Self-portrait in a mirrored doorway across from the Basilica Santa Maria dei Fiori, Florence, Italy, December,2023

Those of you who have been following these blogs know by now how much I love Italy and especially Florence, and how much I appreciate beauty in art and nature, and value understanding. Lucretius knew that understanding brings a sense of awe, something that 20th century scientist Carl Sagan stated with these words: “Understanding is a sort of ecstasy.”

The painter Raphael honored the ancient philosophers in his painting The School of Athens, created almost 100 years after Poggio discovered Lucretius’ poem. Plato and Aristotle stand in the center, surrounded by Socrates, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and others. Raphael himself is among the Ancients, in the lower left corner, looking over his shoulder at the viewer. Yes, they are all white men, but they brought a powerful way of understanding the world to all people, regardless of sex and gender, skin color, or nationality, They brought modernity to the world.

Center section of the School of Athens (1509-1511) by Raphael Sanzio, fresco, 200” x 300”.

Let us not forget about beauty. Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, painted between 1484 and 1486—while Poggio was still alive and living in Tuscany, 35 kilometers from Florence — depicts the lines of De Rerum Natura:

…Before thee, Goddess, and thy coming on,
Flee stormy wind and massy cloud away,
For thee the daedal Earth bears scented flowers,
For thee waters of the unvexed deep
Smile, and the hollows of the serene sky…

Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli, 1484-1486, tempera on canvas, 68” x 109”.

Ironically, Botticelli later became a devoted follower of the puritanical Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola, who preached against secular art and instigated the "Bonfire of the Vanities" in which citizens of Florence brought all their “frivolous” material possessions—cosmetics, mirrors, books, and art [!] —into the Piazza della Signoria and set them ablaze. But Epicurus and Lucretius had the final word: tired of Savanarola’s rants against life’s pleasures, the people of Florence hanged Savanarola in 1498 and then burned his body. Humans need pleasure and beauty to survive happily.

Thanks to all of you who have sent me your comments and encouragement. They have sustained me during the 10 months in which I have spent most of my waking hours writing, researching, and thinking about this book. Please let your friends know about my legacy book titled Confessions of a Morphophiliac (a lover of forms or shapes) by forwarding my posts to them. I hope to have news about a publisher in a month or two.