Verity
The Sun and the Moon as the central motif, with the Heavens in a secondary part. From Iconologia.
What is happening
Cesare Ripa, 1709 “This naked Beauty, holds a Sun in her right Hand; in her left, a Book open, with a Palm; under one Foot the Globe of the World.”
Key · 2 motifs
Tap a motif on the picture, or a line below. Its note opens under the line, with the reading its author gave it.
- Primary motif
- Secondary motifs · 1
The picture
A naked woman holding up a blazing sun with a face in it, an open book and a palm branch in her other hand, one foot on the globe of the world. By eye
The reading
The picture read whole, in the archive's words, from the sources quoted on the marks. Read on, and the picture follows: the motif under discussion keeps its colour.
Ripa's book is the reason a great deal of Western art can be read at all. It is a dictionary of abstract ideas drawn as human figures, each with the author's own written key beside it, and painters, engravers, sculptors and architects used it for two hundred years. Nearly every allegorical figure on a courthouse, a bank or a town hall in Europe or America is descended from a page of it. This is figure 311.
'This naked Beauty, holds a Sun in her right Hand; in her left, a Book open, with a Palm; under one Foot the Globe of the World.' Ripa then reads every part in turn, which is the habit that makes him useful. She is naked because 'downright Simplicity is natural to her'. The sun 'shews her great Delight in Clearness'. The book says that the truth of things is to be found in good authors. The palm is her rising the more she is pressed down.
And the globe under her foot is not scenery. 'The Globe, that being immortal, she is the strongest of all Things in the World, and therefore tramples upon it.' Every element is accounted for, in one sentence each, by the man who specified the figure.
What Ripa adds to this archive is a second reading of the same signs. The sun in Maier and Khunrath is gold, the king, the active principle of the work. The sun here is clarity, and it is held up by a woman with nothing to hide. Neither reading is wrong and neither is the other's source. They are two traditions using one picture, and putting them on the same motif page with a name against each is the thing this archive is built to do.
Decoded: every motif is marked, and each mark carries the reading its author gave it, quoted from the text, or says that it is observed on the picture and not read. The reading above is the archive's own, made from those sources and no others.
Gold, the perfected metal, and the illuminated intellect. The most overloaded symbol in the tradition.
In plain words She holds a small sun in her raised hand, a disc with a face and rays all round it, and it is the brightest thing in the oval. Ripa gives it one job and it is not warmth or life or rule: 'The Sun shews her great Delight in Clearness.' Truth likes to be seen. In this archive the sun is usually gold, or the king, or the active principle of the work; here it is simply the light you cannot hide anything in.
Cesare Ripa, 1709 “Naked, because downright Simplicity is natural to her. The Sun shews her great Delight in Clearness. The Book, that the Truth of Things may be found in good Authors. The Palm, her Rising the more she is depress'd. The Globe, that being immortal, she is the strongest of all Things in the World, and therefore tramples upon it.”
A diagram of everything, drawn so that a person can be found inside it. Note where the human figure stands in the scheme.
In plain words A globe lies on the ground and she has put her foot on it. Ripa is precise about why, and the verb is his: being immortal, she is the strongest of all things in the world, 'and therefore tramples upon it'. The world is not her subject or her setting. It is the thing she outlasts.
Cesare Ripa, 1709 “Naked, because downright Simplicity is natural to her. The Sun shews her great Delight in Clearness. The Book, that the Truth of Things may be found in good Authors. The Palm, her Rising the more she is depress'd. The Globe, that being immortal, she is the strongest of all Things in the World, and therefore tramples upon it.”
Also carrying the Sun and the Moon
49 works carry it. The 6 where it is the central motif are here. The symbol.
Where the detail is the subject
This is in the picture without being what it is about. Below, one work that is about it.
In the same series
Record
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