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Another example of TIME’s true potential (see Culture Morte). Warning: not for the faint hearted!
My dad got me this book (*) on 16th century glass paintings (stained glass) and their 19th and 20th century copies. It focuses mainly on a large collection of painted glass panels residing in Leuven, Belgium. One of these glass paintings shows a scene of Petrarch’s Trionfi: the Triumph of Time.
It’s in fact a very accurate 19th century copy of the 16th century original by the Antwerp artist Pieter Coecke van Aalst. The original pen-drawing is kept at the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. A mid-16th century glass original is on display at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
Time is depicted as an old man (look at his bald head, his long beard and his walking stick) with wings attached to his shoulders and feet (tempus fugit or “time flies”). He’s in the act of devouring a little child. This rather shocking scene refers to the myth of Cronos, the Greek god of time, who ate his siblings in an attempt to stop time, only to discover that it was all in vain. There’s simply no escape from generations succeeding one another. Time is both creator (in Roman mythology he’s called Saturn, god of harvest and agriculture) and destroyer. In his Metamorphoses Ovid (43 BC-17 AD) calls time “the devourer of all things”.
The glass painting shows just one scene of a series of six described by the 14th century Italian poet Petrarch. In his Trionfi he writes about man being conquered by Love, Love in its turn is conquered by Chastity, Chastity by Death, Death by Fame, Fame by Time (in the picture the defeat of Fame is represented by the famous hero Samson -with pilar and lion’s head- being trampled by deer) and finally Eternity triumphs over Time.
I particularly like the mix of unearthly, destructive and mythic powers being unleashed in the forefront, the peaceful Italian landscape with its round Renaissance temple in the middle and the typical skyline of any Flemisch village with its gothic church tower in the back. Simply divine!
(*) Maes, P.V. 1987. Leuvens brandglas. De productie tijdens de 16de eeuw en de nabootsing van oude brandglasmedaillons in de 19de en 20ste eeuw. Leuven: Arca Lovaniensis 13.
While studying historical landscapes, it’s fascinating to see how man succeeded in taming the natural forces that surround us. During the Middle Ages in Europe man built large dikes to defend his village or city from devastating floods. He planted trees and hedges in order to prevent sand dunes from shifting and swallowing his arable land. Not only was he able to protect himself from these forces, he also learned to use them for his own benefit, e.g. constructing water- and windmills and later also hydro-electric stations, solar panel fields… Nowadays, man has even gained control over the weather, shooting silver iodide and dry ice into our atmosphere for cloud seeding. However, the only natural force he never learned to tame is the one we call TIME. Although rarely regarded as a force (certainly not in physics), this photo clearly shows the real potential of time.
It was taken on a day trip in March 2007 in the village of Hotton, situated in the south of Belgium. We followed the trails called Fond des Trottes n° 34 and Porte Aïve n° 23, and stumbled upon this old signpost. The sign indicated that the trail we were following lead to the Voie des Morts, or in English: the Trail of the Dead. Spooky! Anyway, I’m lucky to be alive to tell the story. To be continued…
