Raphael:

See Chapter III, page 109, Chapter V page 136, Chapter VII page 221

 

Rembrandt:

See Chapter I page 23, Chapter II page 81, Chapter III page 101, 103, 112, Chapter VI page 183, Chapter VII page 220, 222, 226

 

Titian (esoteric): * see endnote<A>

That which is esoteric is intended for or understood by only a small number of people with a specialized knowledge or interest. The point Spengler is making is that from Titan onwards cutting edge art was something produced for a progressively smaller audience (albeit an audience with deep pockets) as opposed to the mass popular audience the Church offered.  It was certainly true that Church patronage, especially that of Rome & the popes, was patronage of a refined nature, nonetheless the ostensible audience was the Christian community at large, & the subjects were those which Christendom would understand: Crucifixion, the Passion, illustrations based on Mariology, the Saints, Heaven and Hell.  Titian most certainly did business with the Church, he also began broadening the subject matter (like his partner Giorgione).  The two young masters were recognized as the leaders of their new school of arte moderna, characterized by paintings made more flexible, freed from symmetry and the remnants of hieratic conventions (still found in the works of Giovanni Bellini).

 

Dante:

See Chapter I page 14, 20, Chapter II page 81, 85, Chapter III page 111, Chapter IV page 142, Chapter VI page 183, Chapter VII page 229

 

Wolfram:

See Chapter IV page 142, Chapter VI page 186

 

Okeghem:

See Chapter VII page 230,

 

Palestrina:

See Chapter III page 97, Chapter VII page 220, 230

 

Bach:

See Chapter I page 27, Chapter II page 62, Chapter III page 112, Chapter VI page 183, Chapter VII page 219, 220, 222, 230,231

 

Modern painting (esoteric): * see EndNote<B>

While Spengler was writing Decline (1911-14) the Russian artist Kandinsky was active; both were living & working in Munich at this time.  Kandinsky (1866- 1944) was a Russian painter & art theorist who is credited as the pioneer of abstract art.  Born in Moscow, he spent his childhood & schooling in Odessa & Moscow.  He trained in Law & enjoyed a successful career.  Age 30 he began to paint; he moved to Munich where he painted & studied at the Academy of Fine Arts.  His first paintings (his early stage) are large, expressive coloured masses evaluated independently from forms and lines which no longer to delimit them, but overlap freely to form paintings of extraordinary force.  Music was important to the birth of abstract art, since music is abstract by nature—it does not try to represent the exterior world, but expresses in an immediate way the inner feelings of the soul.  He sometimes used musical terms to identify his works; he called his most spontaneous paintings "improvisations" and described more elaborate works as "compositions."  He was also an art theorist & has deeply influenced Western Art from this angle as well.  He helped found the Munich New Artists' Association, becoming its president in 1909.  After the group dissolved in 1911 he formed a new group, the Blue Rider with like-minded artists such as August Macke, Franz Marc, Albert Bloch & Gabriele Münter.  They released an almanac (The Blue Rider Almanac) and held 2 exhibits.  Kandinsky writing in The Blue Rider Almanac and the treatise "On the Spiritual In Art" (published 1910) were both a defence & promotion of abstract art and an affirmation that all forms of art were equally capable of reaching a level of spirituality. He believed that colour could be used in a painting as something autonomous, apart from the visual description of an object or other form.  These ideas had an almost-immediate international impact especially in England where his works had earlier been well received.

 

Kant (space):

In his Critique of Pure Reason Kant tell us that for the subject space is not something we first experienced and then abstracted as an idea.  Instead, it is something that we have to bring to our experience in order to experience anything in space.  In other words "space" is a concept we bring when we experience; we do not have unmediated access to an "out there”.  We bring framing devices that structure our experience of things and what we encounter is structured according to them (he calls these "manifolds of sensibility" in time and space and "categories of the understanding").  To give an analogy, we have an operating system that loads in "time" and "space" before we can experience anything.  And then if we want to understand an object, when we try to understand something we automatically bring concepts with us.

 

Egyptian art (superposed ranks): * see Endnote<C>

Egyptian hieroglyphs use registers that is where vertical compartments like columns containing writing are arranged side by side and separated by lines, especially in cylinder seals, which often mix text and images. Normally, when dealing with images it only refers to row compartments stacked vertically.  In Egypt registers were used from the Narmer Palette onwards,

 

superposed:

to place above or upon something else, or one upon another; in Geometry to place (one figure) in the space occupied by another, so that the two figures coincide throughout their whole extent.

 

Apollonian art (avoidance of space): * see endnote<D>

Greek pictorial art, on vases & the surviving frescos shows no perspective; the single body, line and form, receives the artist’s entire attention; outside this he shows no interest. 

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Lesche of the Knidians:

a club or meeting place, erected by the people of Cnidus, built 2nd quarter 5th century B.C. at the sanctuary of Apollo in Delphi; all we have today are some architectural relics. Probably was a rectangular building bearing a clerestory along its western side, possibly had a tripartite interior arrangement.  In the 4th century along its southern side was added a wall for placing ex votos.  It hosted two paintings by the famous painter Polygnotus the Thasian.

 

Polygnotus's frescoes (Lesche of the Cnidians): * see EndNote<E>

The most important of his paintings were his frescoes in the Lesche of the Knidians, The subjects of these were the visit to Hades by Odysseus and the taking of Troy.  Pausanias gives us a description of these paintings, figure by figure; in addition French excavations at Delphi recovered the foundations. Archaeologists have tried to reconstruct the paintings (other than their colours).  The figures were detached & seldom overlapping, ranged in 2 or 3 rows one above another; there is no optical perspective-fugures farther were not smaller nor dimmer than the nearer figures, thus executed on almost precisely the same plan as contemporary sculptural reliefs. Polygnotus employed only a few simple colours.  His skill lay in the individual figures he drew, especially the "ethical" and ideal character of his art.  A contemporary and perhaps teacher of Pheidias, he had the same grand manner.  Simplicity, which was almost childlike, sentiment at once noble and gentle, extreme grace and charm of execution, marked his works.