| Title | Creator | Date |
Era |
City | Country | Emotional Sum (Sense of Life or emotional World View) | Theme | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Old Man with a Young Boy | Painter: Domenico Ghirlandaio | 1490 | 1400s | Florence | Italy |
Human companionship or family closeness is real. |
Quiet familial love. (A grandfather (perhaps) gazing upon a grandson, and vice versa, in a clear moment of happy communion.) |
|
| David | Sculptor: Michelangelo Buonarotti | 1504 | 1500s | Florence | Italy |
Man is a strong, indomitable creature who has the intelligence to overcome terrible odds. |
[requires assumption of some context of this work -- not a "cold" introduction to it]: A man able to face a daunting task, with tremulous calm and determination. This is the depiction of the David/Goliath story of the Bible in which David takes on the much more formidable Goliath and wins. |
|
| Burgos Cathedral Crossing | Architect: Unknown | 1569 circa | 1500s | Burgos | Spain |
God is order and reason and light. |
The spirit of god is rational, uplifting and rich in detail |
|
| Pieta | Sculptor: Michelangelo Buonarotti | 1500 | 1500s | Rome | Italy |
Life is acceptance of pain. Resignation in the face of tragedy. |
Resignation and sorrow for a great personal loss. |
|
| Wisdom and Strength | Painter: Paolo Veronese | 1580c | 1500s | Venice? | Italy |
Sumptuousness is good, and the human form is good. |
||
| Horse Seen from Behind | Draftsman: Andrea Boscoli | 1587c | 1500s | United States |
Not much except perhaps stylistic -- confident, strong drafting style, and a vibrant, alive, horse. |
|||
| Othello: the Moor of Venice | Playwright: William Shakespeare | 1603 | 1600s | Stratford-on-Avon | United Kingdom |
Malevolence and horrible tragedy is unrelieved. Evil is potent. |
A great man can be gullible and controlled by an evil character. Or, an evil character can have potency in the world, because of the weakness of a good man. |
|
| Chariot of Apollo | Sculptor: Jean Baptiste (1630-1700) Tuby | 1668-1670 | 1600s | Versailles | France |
The world has thrilling powerful men of action. There are no limits to what can be achieved. |
Elegant, physical power. The fantasy ability to fly through water and air with grace and ease. |
|
| Feast of Belshazzar | Painter: Rembrandt Van Rijn | 1635c. | 1600s | London | United Kingdom |
The only way to know the sense of life or world view of the painting is through it's history, since the image is very mixed. Shows an opulent and sumptuous world, but the people are obviously distressed over something. Assuming one knows its history, you could conclude it is an exercise in depicting the dangers of the worldly pursuits and wealth. |
||
| Head of a Bearded Man | Domenichino: | 1625c | 1600s | New York | United States |
Pensive, worried, detached qualities of humanity |
Worry is the way of the world. |
|
| Real Chiesa di San Lorenzo (Royal Church of St. Lawrence) | Architect: Guarino Guarini | 1680 | 1600s | Torino (Turin) | Italy |
The world is perfected. The joy of seeing complexity that is simplicity, i.e., that the rich complex vision arises from simple elements which because of their arrangement provide layers of visual thrills. |
Complex, soaring geometric order. |
|
| Comedia | Painter: Thomas Wilmer Dewing | 1892-4c | 1800s | Philadelphia | United States |
Life is sumptuous and beautiful and alive. |
Feminine vivacity and gaiety |
|
| Rape of Polyxena, The | Sculptor: Pio Fedi | 1866 | 1800s |
Strength and complex beauty are central. Vitality, passion and action are hallmarks of this work. |
Life is complex strife, entwined with strong god-like characters. |
|||
| Three Graces | Sculptor: Antonio Canova | 1814 | 1800s | Italy |
The female human form is beautiful, graceful, ideal. |
Quiet repose and sisterly love. The piece exudes a quiet elegance and peacefulness amidst the complex three-dimensional composition. The inclusion of "sisterly love" is less certain, except that taking into account the mythological background of the piece. It can be argued that one should not take that into account, so perhaps that should not formally be included in the theme. |
||
| Senso-ju Temple at Asakusa | Hiroshige: | 1840s c | 1800s | Tokyo | Japan |
Pure, simple, quiet tranquility. |
||
| The New Colossus | Author: Emma Lazarus | 1883 | 1800s | New York, NY | United States |
Benevolent celebration of liberty as a beacon to a troubled world. |
A marvelous land of liberty offers welcome to the oppressed of the world. |
|
| La Grande Nevrose | Loysel, Jacques: | c.1896 | 1800s | Paris | France |
The dynamic female body is beautiful and exciting. Although it may not explicitly suggest it, the nude and its tense position could be felt as erotic. |
An animated female body is a vessel of perfection. |
|
| Attila (live performance) | Composer: Giuseppe Verdi | 2010 03 03 | 1851-1900 | New York | United States |
Life is a mix of strength, heroism, romantic passion. The work is a long complex opera, so it has many other lyrical emotions as part of it, but this covers the basic sense of life. |
Loving a heroic woman leads to death |
|
| Ebben? Ne andrò lontana (aria from La Wally) | Composer: Alfredo Catalani | 1892 | 1851-1900 | Milan | Italy |
Longing is the overall emotional tone of the music. The lyric gives reason to this overall tone. |
Sadness at having to leave forever the place where you were happy once. |
|
| Johnson Wax Building | Architect: Frank Lloyd Wright | 1939 | 1900 - 1950 | Racine | United States |
Day to day life can be exalted and pleasurable. |
To Work should be a condition of grandeur and joy. |
|
| Blue Steps of Naumkeag | Landscape Designer: Fletcher Steele | 1937-39 | 1900 - 1950 | Stockbridge, MA | United States |
elegance and grace |
The man-made enhances nature -- it is what makes nature beautiful |
|
| King in Khaki, A | Author: Henry Kitchell Webster | 1909 | 1900 - 1950 | United States |
Honesty is a noble and practical way of life. |
Business acumen produces both material wealth and moral right. The success of the entrepreneur in this story, along with his relation to all his staff and secondary and tertiary folks on the island who work for him -- makes him into a "king" based on important human relations and the rightness of his decisions that result in a successful business enterprise. A subsidiary theme might be termed the power of morality over physical power or economic "power". |
||
| Brass Bowl, The | Vance, Louis Joseph: | 1907 | 1900 - 1950 | United States |
The world is a delightful place. Good things happen to the deserving. |
Life as a gay, lighthearted adventure. |
||
| National Farmers' Bank | Architect: Louis Sullivan | 1907 | 1900 - 1950 | Owatonna MN | United States |
Being able to breath freely -- expansively, and feeling that there are no limits to what man can do. |
The world is expansively, infinitely rich. |
|
| Robie House | Architect: Frank Lloyd Wright | 1910 | 1900 - 1950 | Chicago, Illinois | United States |
The world is open and has sweeping, unending possibilities. |
The essence of a house as shelter, and providing a sense of strength and privacy. That is, a structure that exudes strength through its massive cantilever and massive brick and stone forms, along with its big overhangs sheltering the windows to create a sense of privacy and enclosure, in its urban situation. |
