546
warmest glaciers on the planet, or other warm-glacier species like the numerous
algal and moss species, as well as glacier mice, all found in Iceland.
2
While the
world rightly celebrates the body of Vermeer’s work, the animals (people, et al.) that
he depicted are just that remote: inhabitants of another world, another time. Vermeer
painted 76 or 77 people, not including dozens of others in paintings within the paintings. Given the limitations of our concept of landscape, Vermeer’s oeuvre inculcates in every face, gesture, and human gaze, the mind’s landscape, undifferentiated
between an interior room, a vast map of the world, a picture of trees and truncated
perspectives on a wall, or creatures under his neighbor’s microscope. By his genius
he left perfect echoes, no footprint.
While a Leonardo or Jan Breughel the Elder approached the bifurcation of
humans with their surroundings very differently than Vermeer, all yielded to a conceptual plateau of convergence, wherein “convincing fantasies,” as Joost Keizer has
explored them, could be accounted for. In the case of Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)
he thought of that imaginative vortex as the “impressive” located in the “first ventricle of the brain” “closest to the eyes” and that “location where the imagination,
the intellect and the soul resided”
3
(Fig. 58.1).
58.2 Iterations of Landscape
Wheresoever we hail the landscape, its meaning (étumon), “true sense” compresses
human qualities into a scene of identification, fundamental to the anthropic bias that
has co-evolved in the very guise of our physiological outreach, our senses and our
normal abilities to walk toward a horizon, or pluck an apple from a tree and eat it.
As we have described in some detail elsewhere,
4
every human myth, allegory, and
pictorial invention follows a trajectory informed by the conflation of an anthropomorphic lexicon. The strawberry populates Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8 AD) as a confirmed inhabitant of the Garden of Eden and the endless array of Nativity scenes and
virtually every aspect of the Christ Passion. Roses become “thee three graces”; columbine a symbol of Mary’s grief; narcissus her sorrow; the Dove, as perceived by
Noah, an end to the great Flood; an Ermine, symbolizing the purity of a Knight.
5
2 See “The Monsoon Maritime Glaciers In The Southeastern Part Of Xizang,” by Li Ji-jun and
Zheng Ben-xing, in Geological And Ecological Studies Of Qinghai-Xizang Plateau, Proceedings
Of Symposium On Qinghai-Xizang (Tibet) Plateau, Beiing, China, Volume II, Environment And
Ecology Of Qinghai-Xizang Plateau, Science Press, Gordeon and Breach, Inc., New York, 1981,
p. 1601.
3 Leonardo’s Paradox – Word and Image in the Making of Renaissance Culture, by Joost Keizer,
Reaktion Books, London, 2019, pp. 144–145.
4 See After Eden: History, Ecology & Conscience, by M.C.Tobias, Avant Books, San Diego, CA
1985, pp. 91–92.
5 See Nature and Its Symbols, by Lucia Impelluso, Translated by Stephen Sartarelli, The J. Paul
Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA 2003.
58 Metaphysical Landscapes
warmest glaciers on the planet, or other warm-glacier species like the numerous
algal and moss species, as well as glacier mice, all found in Iceland.
2
While the
world rightly celebrates the body of Vermeer’s work, the animals (people, et al.) that
he depicted are just that remote: inhabitants of another world, another time. Vermeer
painted 76 or 77 people, not including dozens of others in paintings within the paintings. Given the limitations of our concept of landscape, Vermeer’s oeuvre inculcates in every face, gesture, and human gaze, the mind’s landscape, undifferentiated
between an interior room, a vast map of the world, a picture of trees and truncated
perspectives on a wall, or creatures under his neighbor’s microscope. By his genius
he left perfect echoes, no footprint.
While a Leonardo or Jan Breughel the Elder approached the bifurcation of
humans with their surroundings very differently than Vermeer, all yielded to a conceptual plateau of convergence, wherein “convincing fantasies,” as Joost Keizer has
explored them, could be accounted for. In the case of Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)
he thought of that imaginative vortex as the “impressive” located in the “first ventricle of the brain” “closest to the eyes” and that “location where the imagination,
the intellect and the soul resided”
3
(Fig. 58.1).
58.2 Iterations of Landscape
Wheresoever we hail the landscape, its meaning (étumon), “true sense” compresses
human qualities into a scene of identification, fundamental to the anthropic bias that
has co-evolved in the very guise of our physiological outreach, our senses and our
normal abilities to walk toward a horizon, or pluck an apple from a tree and eat it.
As we have described in some detail elsewhere,
4
every human myth, allegory, and
pictorial invention follows a trajectory informed by the conflation of an anthropomorphic lexicon. The strawberry populates Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8 AD) as a confirmed inhabitant of the Garden of Eden and the endless array of Nativity scenes and
virtually every aspect of the Christ Passion. Roses become “thee three graces”; columbine a symbol of Mary’s grief; narcissus her sorrow; the Dove, as perceived by
Noah, an end to the great Flood; an Ermine, symbolizing the purity of a Knight.
5
2 See “The Monsoon Maritime Glaciers In The Southeastern Part Of Xizang,” by Li Ji-jun and
Zheng Ben-xing, in Geological And Ecological Studies Of Qinghai-Xizang Plateau, Proceedings
Of Symposium On Qinghai-Xizang (Tibet) Plateau, Beiing, China, Volume II, Environment And
Ecology Of Qinghai-Xizang Plateau, Science Press, Gordeon and Breach, Inc., New York, 1981,
p. 1601.
3 Leonardo’s Paradox – Word and Image in the Making of Renaissance Culture, by Joost Keizer,
Reaktion Books, London, 2019, pp. 144–145.
4 See After Eden: History, Ecology & Conscience, by M.C.Tobias, Avant Books, San Diego, CA
1985, pp. 91–92.
5 See Nature and Its Symbols, by Lucia Impelluso, Translated by Stephen Sartarelli, The J. Paul
Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA 2003.
58 Metaphysical Landscapes