4 august 2024
John Bjarne Grover
In spite of holiday I looked up another Giusto for peeping at my theory once again. (And, besides, I had also been to the Battistero in Padova to look at the art). I stopped at what is given as his 'Birth of John the Baptist' (it is not the birth of the virgin Mary?) which I - choosing from among the 35 poems TEQ #1563-1597 - recognized as potentially referred to in my TEQ #1573:
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There are two levels - the upper with the birth-giver and the newborn below. The poem seems to suggest that there is a precision level there - could be with the textile of 'canvas' being rolled up or rolled out from the hands of the kneeling woman down left. Could be this 'canvas' means the artwork itself. The 'voting' is clearly the pouring of the water ('wetting'), symbolic of the birth (pouring out of the container 'flask') which for the child is the idea of getting a flash of milk. The wetting could also be the wetting of the eye that looks at the artwork. Could be the same phenomenon as in his 'Wedding in Cana' where it seems that the water poured from the container has the function of the light. The three women sitting at the lower side of the bed all seem to have their hands in a distance of appr a newborn child, while the row of women to the right could be performing a 'half' of this? See the idea of 'three and a half'. I could guess that the 'axle of Brambani' could be that distance between the hands of the kneeling females in the lower part of the image - holding a quasi scroll of textile or canvas, pouring the water from a flask and being the newborn body that wants the flash of milk.
It seems that the relevant parallel among my 23 photos is photo #1 - both in its plain form and mirrored vertically:
It is the vertically mirrored black-and-white photo which in its upper part seems to show the woman in the birth-bed - dressed in white clothes. The lefthand side of her clothes falls down on the precision level below - where it transforms into the scroll of white textiles. One sees also how the bed ends with the white fields underneath which is the white dress of the woman holding the child. The row of women in the upper half sends a line of arms across her stomach continued with the arm of the woman to the left - this goes from the hands holding the water via the hands holding the body (of the mother) to the hands holding her textiles to the left - and this line or 'axis' (of 'Brambani'?) has a counterpart in the lines of the vertically mirrored version:
The order of the hands holding textile, body, water is changed in the lower part of the image - unless one considers the meal of the hen or chicken served in the upper part as 'the body'. This would correspond to the shoe of the cancan dancer from the photo #2. Clearly if this piece of poultry falls down on precision level there, it seems to be born from the woman holding the newborn in her hands.
The row of women to the right in Giusto's image corresponds to the white spots on the right of mine. These seem to be aligned along the trails of the poultry falling down on precision level there. One sees also the oval tub of water present in my image.
There is an obvious rotation symmetry in Giusto's artwork - which recognizes this roasted hen or chicken as the symmetry of the textile scroll - plus the water over and under - and the white dress of the woman who had the child inside and outside her body. This white dress is well present in the vertically mirrored photo #1. The row of women coming in through the door corresponds to the corridor going into the background as a correlate to the big breast in Giusto's "Annunciation" (see example 5) - the idea of getting a 'flash of milk' for the newborn. However, if the rotation symmetry applies to my photo #1, it comes out with the vertical white line approximately along the vertical axis down from the poultry:
Where is the 'axle of Brambani'? I looked for it in the mirror-symmetry to photo 1 among the 23 photos - that is in the last photo - photo #23 - and found something which perhaps could count as that when this was mirrored vertically:
It is seen that photo #23 in its original form (not upside-down) exhibits two curvatures resembling the two on top of Giusto's image - see also example 7 - as well as in the rotated photo #1:
Clearly this is the fall down on precision level there. This could suggest that the 'axle of Brambani' really is approximately across the two curvatures on top - approximately along the apparent 'curtain' suspended in the background - with a 'rotation' correlate in the horizontal line along the bed at the heads of the three women on the floor.
One recognizes in the three hand distances also the three elements in the title to TEQ #1563. The good faith sees the photos instead of the 'farts' - could be that meant the 'frescos' in those days. The image is a cut in time - although it is reasonable to assume that scholastic semantics of those days was not so synchronically oriented.
It was a gull in Venice that made me aware of these textual matters - and indeed it seems that the gulls in Venice have been concerned with this theme for a while:
Source:
Giusto de' Menabuoi: Birth of John the Baptist
© John Bjarne Grover
On the web 4 august 2024
