Fruit of the Contemplative Life
Fruit of the contemplative life: => Art of the Mystic => : Alexander March 27, 2013, 03:39:54 AM
-
i'm a big fan of gustave dore, and the images he did of the divine comedy.
(http://i.imgur.com/ouE26qm.jpg) (http://imgur.com/ouE26qm)
paradiso, with dante and beatrice
(http://i.imgur.com/ezsSZkf.jpg)
another with dante and beatrice. looking up from the dark wood of error
-
Thank-you aglorincz, for contributing another artist for us to examine. Your choice of Paradiso, with Dante and Beatrice, by the French artist Gustave Dore (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Dor%C3%A9) reminds me a great deal of my experiences if the heavenly host in deep immaterial samadhi; however, not standing passively on the side, like Dante and Beatrice. I was simply one of the many points of light radiating, not just light, but love as well.
Most of us are familiar with the work of illustrate the works of Gustave Dore (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Dor%C3%A9), because he was a popular 19th century book illustrator. It just so happens that most of the work of Jean Fouquet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Fouquet) was in book illustration.
Some of the best known work of Gustave Dore (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Dor%C3%A9) was in the illustration of the works of Lord Byron; an illustrated English Bible; The Legend of The Wandering Jew for a short poem by Pierre-Jean de Ranger; a French edition of Cervantes's Don Quixote; he also illustrated an oversized edition of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven."
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/56/Gustave_Dor%C3%A9_-_The_Holy_Bible_-_Plate_I%2C_The_Deluge.jpg/460px-Gustave_Dor%C3%A9_-_The_Holy_Bible_-_Plate_I%2C_The_Deluge.jpg)
Dore's "Deluge" reminds me of a night when I left my body and I stood in the garden outside my bedroom window on a full-moon night, and I looked up at the moon, and flew there, then orbited the moon, then flew down onto the back side to see the craters. There I saw beings writhing in suffering, like in this drawing. I reached out to one being to lift it out of its suffering in Purgatory, when a great and powerful being came and picked me up and flung me back to Earth like a bug.
I learned from that experience that the being that people refer to as "the devil" is actually more like Shiva, in that he is the lord of the underworld, who protects the people in hell, he does not sentence them there. People go to hell for their evil ways. He only provides a protective environment within which they work out their misdeeds through suffering.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3d/Judgement_of_Solomon.jpg/478px-Judgement_of_Solomon.jpg)
Dore's work is characterized by the dramatic lighting of tenebrism. The above piece and The Judgment of Solomon is another good example of his use of tenebrism.
Dore's illustration work reminds me of the work of the illustrations of William Blake (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake)
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/07/William_Blake_003.jpg/506px-William_Blake_003.jpg)
Blake's The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with Sun (1805)