Idleness/Wallpaper

Idleness.

An Essene sits idly on a bushel, and looks to the stars. Beneath he holds a torch, lit with fire. Sluggishness, in the appearance of the righteous, hidden by a hood, is of use neither to himself nor to others - Alciato, Emblem 81.

The word bushel always connoted, in my mind, an amount, a certain volume, as in ‘bushels of corn’: I never considered the bushel as container. Certainly the phrase to hide ones light under a bushel now makes plain sense to me, whereas before it did not. To be fair to the Essene, perhaps it’s a frosty night, and he's got a cold arse. I like it that the stars are black asterisks in the sky.

It’s been an idle weekend.

* * *

Further to my mention below of our trip to Rome last year, I attach the following image, a detail from a photograph my wife took of one of the paintings or frescoes in San Pietro. By chance, I tried it out as my Windows-XP wallpaper, and liked it so much that it's stayed there ever since. I wish now that I knew something about it - its subject, the artist; but I've been unable to find a specific resource about artworks in the basilica proper, as opposed to the Sistine Chapel, or the Vatican Museums. If anyone who might read this should happen to know, I’d be very glad to be enlightened.

Update, 9^th March I now know that this is at the altar now dedicated to St. Pius X, after having found an illustrated English-language Vatican guidebook in a local 2nd-hand bookshop. There was no specific mention of the artist or the painting's subject-matter though.

Posted by misteraitch at February 16, 2003 06:44 PM | TrackBack