GLOSSY RED

GLOSSY RED GLOSSARY -

(thanks to Hall, Marcia (1992) Color and Meaning: Practice and Theory in Renaissance Painting, Cambridge University Press: New York)

Bole – reddish earth used as the preparatory base under gold leaf in panel painting. P236

Cinnabar – a red mineral, mercuric sulfide, which when ground produces the pigment vermillion. P 237

Minium – red lead: an orangish red pigment. P 238

Ochre – an earth pigment ranging in color from yellowish to reddish to brownish tones suitable for fresco or easel painting. P 238

Realgar – a reddish orange pigment, related to orpiment and often used in conjunction with it. Also derived from arsenic and theefore poisonous. P 239

Sinopia – in fresco, the brush underdrawing applied, originally in the red earth sinoper, to the arriccio (layer of rough plaster) on which a second, smooth layer (intonaco) of plaster was applied for the final painting. P239

Venetian red – term used in the 17c and following to identify a red earth extracted from Badia di Calavena near Verona and used in cinquecento Venetian painting. P240

Vermillion – brilliant red pigment obtained from mercuric sulfide, with very good hiding power. P240

...many more to come

Essay by Alice Johnston focuses on Fierz-Davids 'ghostly bull-god'

an interesting review of Women’s Dionysian Initiation: The Villa of Mysteries in Pompeii by Linda Fierz-David found here ...

this is just a quote from the essay/review ... but it  highlights a part of the 'rite' that I didn't 'get' before ...

'Women are governed by the principle of relatedness, not because they want to be, but because it is their natural capacity to become enmeshed in people and things and experiences. Their tendency to build walls of animus opinions is an attempt to separate themselves from their over intrusive world. Yet opinions alone are insufficient; at best relatedness becomes negative. The alternative is indicated in the Villa of Mysteries:

The bellowing of the ghostly bull-god heralds the frightful necessity of rending all ties in themselves and giving up all relatedness in the world, in order to find relationship to the spirit and therewith also to themselves. Women must do this with the greatest vehemence ... This vehemence is necessary because subduing the worldly Eros surely means the heaviest sacrifice for every naturally womanly woman. She loses so much that she seems to herself like a ghost among ghosts. At this moment of development, a great deal hangs in the balance for every woman with an inner life, and it is a test, for no woman can know in advance whether she will lose forever the life which flows from relatedness or whether she will remain ghost-like. Only the god-spirit knows.

Just as the womanly woman needs to experience her separateness, the manly man, guided as he is by the Logos principle, needs to be initiated into relatedness.'