Art
History as the image of inner spiritual impulses.
Lecture 10 of 13 lectures given in Dornach
between 9 and 29 October 1917.
Part
4: Lecture 10.
The artistic representation of imaginative-spiritual imagery of
the Fourth post Atlantean epoch moving towards the start of the
more materialistically orientated 5th epoch.
Lecture by Rudolf Steiner
Dornach, 5 October 1917
The
“Disputa” of Raphael — the “School of
Athens.”
I
didn't want to use several images as an introduction to my art
history lecture today, but limit our observational introduction
to only two images, both which will be placed into the newer
historical development of mankind. We will then link these to
the introduction of cultural epochs as we have done in earlier
years.
Look at this first painting to which our primary observation
will refer; a painting you know well, the so-called
“Disputa” of Raphael.
197
Raphael Camera della Segnatura, The “Disputa”
Let
us visualize the painting's content briefly: below, in the
centre, we see a kind of altar with a chalice on it and the
host, a sacramental symbol. To the left and right are religious
individuals and we recognise them as teachers, popes and
bishops according to their drapery. Opposite the middle, the
group is seen as moving from left and right according to the
hand gesture of a person directly right of the altar. According
to this we observe that these individuals are taking part in
something descending from above. As a result we see, by looking
at the space close behind the altar where the group is
positioned, into the landscape and directly above it — in
the upper half of the picture — cloud masses
accumulating. To some extent we see the infinite horizon within
this space. From out of the middle of these cloud masses we see
angelic genii rise, floating on both sides of the dove,
bringing the Gospels, transported out of the undeterminable
spiritual world. In the centre we can see the Holy Ghost
depicted in the symbol of a dove. Above the somewhat receding
Holy Ghost we have — clearly, the angelic figures
carrying the Gospels are actually coming forward in perspective
— the figure of Christ Jesus and above Him the figure of
the Father God. Thus we have the Trinity above the chalice
where the sanctuary is found. On both sides of the Christ
figure we have corresponding groups; a heavenly group above,
reflected below by the worldly group. On both sides of the
central Christ figure appear Saints, the Madonna on his right
and John the Baptist, followed by others: David, Abraham, Adam,
Paul, Peter and so on. Still further up rising into the clouds
are actual genii figures, spiritual individualities.
This image we have in front of us now — of course there
are much better copies available — I would like to link
this to the evolution of mankind.
Primarily we need to clearly distinguish between what is given
here and what we can experience when we transport ourselves
into the feelings of the time when this image was actually
being painted. If we shift ourselves into the 16th
Century and compare it with the complexity of sensations a
painter would paint in, today, we need to say: at that time, in
Rome, when Pope Julius II reigned and what worked in him as
Julius II in the middle of his twentieth year to call Raphael to
Rome, was at that time, and in every town, the human experience
of something which lived as a deep truth depicted in this
painting. Today of course something similar could be painted;
but if it was to be similar to this painting in the scene
design, it would not depict any true reality.
Such things need to be made completely clear otherwise one will
never arrive at a concrete observation of human history but
forever remain in abstract observations of a legend — a
bad saga — which is called the history today in schools
and universities. Every detail which we can lay our eyes on in
order to understand this painting, to really understand it
artistically, means every small detail has a certain meaning.
Just think how Raphael, this extraordinary individuality Raphael,
about whom we have often spoken, how he arrived in Rome. He too
was in a body of a twenty year old and one can easily conclude
that while he was mainly painting this picture, he was
approaching the end of his twenties. At the time he was
completely under the influence of two old people who had
already experienced two great battles in life and who had plans
and ideas, ideas who everyone, one could say, considered as
most far-reaching.
Let
us be completely clear: under the papal predecessors before
Julius II, Rome was at the time basically completely different
than during Julius II's reign. The most remarkable here, as
predecessors, were the Borgias. One could say that
during the time of Alexander VI Rome was gradually being
developed as overlapping the old ruins and rubble work of the
ancient world where the Church of St Peter almost expired and
became impractical. Admittedly these people were filled with a
certain nostalgia for the artistic immensity of antiquity and
wanting to enliven it again. However, a strange incident
happened between the Borgias and Julius II, just at the turn of
the 15th into the 16th century. Beneath
the room and hall which belonged to the Camera della
Segnatura, Alexander VI had two frescoes painted which we
want to talk about today. It is surely extraordinary that
Julius II, the patron of Raphael, had shunned this lower room
which had been the ordinary residence of his predecessor, as if
ghosts of cholera and the plague circulated there. He shunned
this completely, could not be bothered with artistic or any
other events which had taken place there before. On the
contrary he decided, according to his ideas for the rooms and
halls in the upper storeys, to spruce them up as we can still
see them today. We must just think of the mind-set of Pope
Julius II in connection with the beginning of the
16th Century and how his mind worked quite
differently to those of his predecessors.
The
other patron of Raphael was Bramante. He had a plan in
his head for the new St Peter's Church. Both Julius II and
Bramante were already old people, as I said, who had the storms
of life behind them. They called youthful individuals like
Raphael to Rome to serve them, bring to expression picturesquely
the new ideas powerfully rumbling in their heads, new impulses
which they thought should penetrate humanity. One should look
more closely at these impulses that originated in Rome and were
to penetrate humanity from the beginning of the 16th
Century onwards. These impulses depended from the one side on
the close connection of the development of the outer Christian
ecclesiastical world and then again, what the establishment of
the Christian ecclesiastical world would relate to. On the
other side it relates to the entire historic development of the
western world. Just think for once, that today's human being
has great difficulty in transporting his feelings and thoughts
into a time, as it were, that have developed out of this image,
so often named the “Disputa”. Even more difficult
it is for contemporary mankind to transport themselves into
centuries further back when Christianity already had power. I
have often mentioned that people today have the impression that
mankind were always as they are today. That is not quite the
case, particularly in relation to their soul life, they were
not like now. Just as with almost two thousand years before the
Mystery of Golgotha something had been inserted into human
evolution beside this Mystery which has spread into the breadth
of social evolution, so something quite different to the
Mystery of Golgotha came forth which we understand in a
different way today. People imagine far too vaguely that at the
time when this image was created, mankind was subjected to the
discovery of America towards the end of the 15th
century; secondly the entirely different social understanding
came about through the invention of printing which finally,
through Copernican and Kepler viewpoints established a new
science.
Just look at this painting. I want to say: if a painter would
paint it today it would not in the same sense of truth be what
it was then, it can't be; because today one couldn't find the
soul who would paint this image in the same sense as at that
time when it was actually painted, who would objectively with
such an imagination for the earth have been thus, as if America
hadn't yet been discovered. These would be souls who look at up
at the clouds with true faith, who imagine the spiritual world
in the clouds as we imagine it today, who to a certain extent
imagine the clouds as real spatial bodies. Such souls are no
longer to be found today, not even amongst the most naive.
However, we imagine the souls of those times incorrectly if we
don't believe that the content of this painting was something
directly reflected by them. Let us consider — what
exactly is the content of this painting? Out of today's
scientific viewpoint we could identify the content of this
image: we are accustomed to say that Imagination is the first
step to looking into the higher worlds. If we say: up to the
16th century mankind had a view regarding the world
and cosmic space in relation to the earthly world, which
depended on imagination, then this is the actual truth.
Imaginations were at that time something lively; and Raphael
painted lively representations of soul experiences. The view of
the world, the world image, was still at that time something
imaginative.
These imaginations were dispelled by the caustic power of
Copernicanism, the discovery of America and the art of
printing. From this time mankind took the place of imagination,
what we call imaginative knowledge and imaginative perception,
and replaced it with outer representational images of the
world's construction in totality. Thus, while presently we
imagine the sun, the circling planets around it and so on, the
people then couldn't do so at all; when they wanted to speak
about something similar, they spoke about imaginative images. A
representation of such an imagination is this painting. In the
centuries in which imaginative cognition developed gradually to
allow such paintings like those Raphael made, came to a certain
cessation in the 16th Century, these centuries are
thus the 16th, 15th, 14th,
13th, 12th, 11th,
10th right back to the 9th Century, but
no further back. If we want to go yet further back we won't
find any real imaginative representations any longer if we
ourselves want to experience imaginative art, as people did in
these mentioned centuries, which we find difficult enough to
raise in the soul today, imaginatively.
If
we wish to experience what Christianity was before the
6th Century we need to imagine the Christian
experience as far more spiritual than we tend to do usually.
Augustine extracted only what he could use from the
Christian imaginations. Yet by reading Augustine today one gets
quite a different feeling for what else lived as a world view
and as an image of the interconnections of the world with
humanity at that time, so different from now. Of particular
importance are the ideas which you find on reading Scotus
Erigena, who taught at the time of Charles the Bald. One
might say that these ancient centuries before the
9th were permeated with Christian thoughts
experienced by those who at least elevated their thoughts to
permeate their Christian thinking with highly spiritual
imagination. One might say when humanity created a world view
during these ancient times they included really very little of
their direct sense experiences. From their world view they
included much more of that which did not result from
sense experiences but had been brought about by old clairvoyant
sight of the world. When we go back to the first centuries
after the Mystery of Golgotha and follow the Christian ideas
then we find that these ideas are such than one would rather
say — these people were interested in the heavenly
Christ, the Christ as He was in the spiritual worlds, while
what He became on the earth below they considered more as
supplementary. To search for The Christ amidst spiritual
beings, to think of Him in relation to super-sensory
spirituality was their essential striving, and that came out of
the old spiritual — then the atavistic — world
view. This world view filled the ancient culture right down to
the third post-Atlantean age. At that time it was thought that
the earth really was some kind of supplement to the
spiritual.
One
should familiarise oneself with an imagination which is
entirely essential if one would understand, would want to
comprehend, how humanity actually developed from that
time to now. With this imagination we must acquaint ourselves
with the idea that the Europeans had by necessity to drive back
spiritual imagination for the unfolding of their culture. This
should be dealt with in sympathy and not antipathy — this
should in no way be judged with a critical mind but the facts
should simply be taken as they are presented: it was simply the
fate, Europe's karma to acquire their culture in a way they had
to. It was Europe's fate: pushing back spiritual ideas, curbing
it so to speak.
Thus it became ever clearer and more meaningful that from the
9th Century Europe needed Christianity while
spiritual ideas were being suppressed. A result of this
necessity was the splitting of the Greek- oriental and the
Roman Catholic Church. At that time it split the East from the
West. This is very important. The West had the destiny to push
spiritual impulses into the East. There they remained. One can
really not understand what happens in the becoming of
being human beings when one doesn't have a clear understanding
of the need to repel spiritual impulses towards the East
— to what is connected to Asia and to Russia as a
European peninsula — from the 8th and
9th Centuries. These impulses were pushed together
and developed independently from western European and central
European life, and propagated into the present Russia.
This is very important. Only once this was properly
established. Today there is a tendency not to consider things
through relationships. As a result an event such as the Russian
revolution apparently developed in a few months — someone
or other came to this idea — while the truth pre-empting
it lay in the background as a result of the specific course of
events through the centuries, while spiritual life became
invisible, impractical and pushed back towards the East and
being stuck, yet still working in a chaotic, indefinable way
made people stand right within events in the East. Yet this
standing within it was really hardly living within it just like
people who swim in a lake — if they have not exactly
drowned — have seawater surrounding them. Likewise, what
worked as spiritual impulses superficially in the East, still
existed spiritually. People swam inside it and had no clue what
pressed in on the surface from the 9th Century and
which was then pushed back to the East, so that it could be
safe guarded to survive and enter evolution later. People who
originated in the East and who gradually developed from
migration and similar relationships, into their souls the
spiritual impulses were introduced which couldn't be used in
the West, South and Central Europe.
The
West retained something extraordinary. The East, without
knowing — most important things run their course in the
subconscious — the East, without knowing, remained steady
on the basic saying of the Gospels: “My Kingdom is not of
this world”. Hence in the East the leaning within the
physical plane is always upwards, towards the spiritual world.
The West depended on reversing the sentence: “My Kingdom
is not of this World” by correcting it to make the
Kingdom of Christ in this world. As a result we see Europe had
the fate of constituting the realm of Christ outwardly as an
empire on the physical plane. One could say from Rome the law
was proclaimed since the 9th Century: break away
from the sentence “My Kingdom is not of this World”
by actually constituting a worldly kingdom, a kingdom for
Christ Jesus on earth, which would be on the physical
plane.
The
Roman pope gradually became the one to say: My Kingdom is the
Kingdom of Christ; but this Kingdom of Christ is from this
world; we have constituted it in such a way that this Kingdom
of Christ is of this world. However a consciousness prevailed
that Christ's kingdom was not one which could be based on the
13 ground rules of external natural existence. People were
aware that when they looked out into nature, lit by the sun's
morning redness and the sunset's glow, by the stars, then it is
not only a matter of what the eyes saw, what the ears heard or
the hands could grip, but in the widths of infinite space at
the same time existed something of the spiritual kingdom.
Everything visible in the world is to some extent the last
outflow, the last wave of the spiritual world. This visible
world is only complete when one is totally aware that it is the
outflow of a spiritual world. The spiritual world is real;
humanity has but lost their sight of this spiritual world. It
is hidden yet it is a reality, an actuality. When a person
enters the gate of death and is particularly blessed, he or she
steps into the spiritual world. In times past people were far
more lively in their thoughts than we can imagine. When the
blessed ones who had died went through the gate of death, they
entered a world which we can imagine in the very present time
— permeated with clouds, permeated with stars, piercing
the orbit of the planets. It was something so concrete that the
souls of the dead could create the upper group depicted in the
painting. The souls of the dead combined what existed for them
out of the past to depict this concrete mystery, this concrete
secret of the nature of the Trinity in their midst: as the
Father God — out of the character of the present: the
Christ Jesus — and out of the reality of the future: the
Holy Ghost.
In
the reality of that present day world, if the physically sensed
world did not appear as a mere illusion to people and let them
live like animals, what differentiated itself in the reality of
time had to appear on the physical plane in sighs, as a
reference to the invisible spiritual world weaving and living
above the clouds. Future generations have to have living signs
for those not yet born and for those who are now passed over
souls and are in possession of direct sight.
On
the altar stands the Chalice with the Sanktissimum, the host.
This host or wafer is no mere bit of external matter for people
who stand on the right, left and around it, but this host is
surrounded by its aura. Within this aura of the host forces
work which pour down from the Trinity. Such imaginations
experienced by the heads of church fathers, bishops and popes
regarding the sanctity of an altar are incomprehensible by
present day humanity. This imagination has elapsed in the
course of time. A moment is eternalized in this painting by the
people below the altar rising: here is the mystery which is
positioned on the altar: something surrounds the host. This
something can be seen by those who have died, namely the
blessed ones: David, Abraham, Adam, Moses, Peter and Paul
— these departed ones look upon this in the same way we
on the physical plane would observe things in the sense
world.
When we look at what is below, under the central sacred
sacrament, we have to some measure an image in the lower layers
of the painting of which a person like Pope Julius II said:
This, in its great glory, I want to establish on earth in Rome
if at all possible; such a kingdom, such an empire — not
a state but an empire — in order for things to take place
in this empire and be so enveloped by these auras that the past
and its impulses live on in these auras. An empire that exists
in this world but which, because it is of this world, contains
signs and symbols for what lives in the spiritual world.
Ideas of this kind Julius II incited first in Bramante and then
in youthful Raphael. Thus it came about that the young Raphael
could compose this painting. In a way Julius II wanted this
painting in his study, have it constantly before him like a
holy saying on which Rome had to be based because it contained
the most important things in the mysteries. However this empire
had to be on this earth, of this earth with a spiritual
inclusion.
If
one allows all these experiences we have spoken about to work
on one's soul, from its impression one might say: the spiritual
world has been pushed back into the East since the
9th Century as is shown by the clouds driven
backward and up, waiting for their time to come.
In
contrast there were preparations being made in the West for the
5th post-Atlantean epoch in which we are all still
living and in which we will live for a long time, which exists
under the signature: My kingdom is of this world and this
kingdom will increasingly become more of this world. However
this kingdom which is of this world was founded nearly from the
beginning of the 5th post-Atlantean epoch under the
influence of old people like Bramante and Julius II, but also
the youth Raphael. The most important historical things happen
subconsciously and from this subconscious yet wise basis Julius
II called Raphael. We know that humanity was becoming ever
younger through the centuries; we know that since the beginning
of the 5th post-Atlantean epoch the age of the
twenty eight had been reached and it was now “27 years
old”. Certainly Bramante and Julius II were old people
but they were not as directly placed in the world as could the
youthful Raphael in his young body with youthful forces of
twenty-eight when he painted this way. This is an important
spiritual background in the development of humanity.
We
can recall how Raphael painted in the characterized thought
(explained above) of Rome at the time; he painted to a certain
extent in protest against the 5th post-Atlantean epoch for the
fourth post-Atlantean epoch. This was not the case but
let us hypothetically argue that it was thus in Raphael's soul:
we can imagine that in his soul, in his subconscious soul lived
knowledge which would be coming out of the 5th post
Atlantean time. Out of this godless, spirit-robbed world of the
5th post-Atlantean time humanity's thoughts would be
permeated with bare, barren and icy space where sun and
spiritless planets depict the dreary space, spiritlessly
imagining the world and try, according to spiritless laws of
nature, construct the unfolding of the world. Let us imagine
what had been presented to Raphael's soul: the reality of the
spiritual emptiness of the 5th post-Atlantean epoch. Raphael's
soul had counter acted: It should not be like this, I will
throw myself against this mindless epoch with its imposed
notions in frozen space with mindless mist in the form of the
Kant-Laplace theories, with my lively spiritual existence. I
want to permeate the imagination as much as possible in this
dreary existence with true imagination which offers itself to
clairvoyant understanding of the world. — Suppose this is
what Raphael's soul depicted. Thus it appeared in his
subconscious soul; it had even appeared in the same way in the
soul of Julius II.
Our
age really doesn't need to despise great minds like Julius II
or even the Borgias as is done with historical winners, because
history still has to reduce some judgements regarding our
contemporaries — the greatest ones of our times —
just as it did with the Borgias or Julius II and will be the
case of individuals in the future. People present at that time
just did not have a distance to it.
Raphael was born at the start of the 5th
post-Atlantic epoch, one could say, as a child of the
5th post-Atlantic epoch. He was really born out of
this 5th post-Atlantic epoch but as a lively protest
against his age — he wanted to stand within its beauty
which this epoch no longer experienced as real; this epoch
strived to insert sensible spirituality into de-spiritualized
certainty and impose that on the 5th post-Atlantean
epoch, as has been discovered from spiritual research. Raphael's
aim was more or less to depict clear images visible in the
spiritual realm, imported from that realm into this world, in a
painting filled with signs of the supersensible, thereby
creating another world. As a result this image is through and
through a true picture because it has originated in a lively
experience arising from that time.
Just consider this particular time when the child of the
5th post-Atlantic epoch drew the entire imaginative,
spiritual imagery of the 4th post-Atlantean time
into the 5th. Roughly at this time, during nearly
the same year, a Nordic personality slipped up the penitent's
stair in Rome, the stairs acclaimed for their ability to be
equated to godly work according to the number of stairs
climbed, because the number of steps taken on the stairs meant
the same number of days relieved of hell fire. While Raphael was
painting in the Vatican the Camera della Segnatura and similar
images, this Nordic person, so devoted, in full of belief, so
concerned for his soul's salvation, ascended the stair —
so many stairs for so many days free from purgatory, doing work
to please God. While he was thus climbing the stair, he had a
vision — the vision showed him the futility of such holy
work rushing up the stairs — a vision which ripped open
the veil between him and that world which Raphael as a child of
the 5th post-Atlantean time was painting as a
testament of the 4th post-Atlantean time.
You
can recognise this person as Luther, the antitheses of
Raphael. Raphael, even when he was looking around in the outer
world, would see colour and form, all kinds of spiritual
images, everything as expressions of the supersensible world
yet reflected, expressed as sensual colour, forms and gestures.
Luther was at the same time in Rome, filled with song and
poetry, yet amorphous, formless in his soul, rejecting
everything in this world which surrounded him in Rome. Like the
spiritual world was pushed back in the 9th century
into the East, it was now a testament of the 4th
post-Atlantean epoch in Europe. Luther pushed it all back. Thus
in the future the threefold world presented itself: in the East
spirituality was pushed back, in the South it was
somewhat divided as the testament of the 4th
post-Atlantean epoch and again became pushed back and rejected.
The musical element of the North took the place
of the colour and form-rich testament of the
South. Luther is really the antithesis of Raphael. Raphael is a
child of the 5th post-Atlantean epoch, his soul
however contained everything which lived in the 4th
post-Atlantean time. Luther is a late-comer of the
4th post-Atlantean time, he doesn't belong in the
5th post-Atlantean epoch; one might say he was
transferred from the 4th into the 5th. In
his frame of mind Luther was completely within the
4th post-Atlantean time. His thoughts and feelings
were like a person living in the 4th epoch but he
was transferred into the 5th and lived now out of an
echo sounding into the 5th epoch with its blatancy,
its obvious natural history and ice fields of barren
spirituality. Raphael had the soul content of the 4th
post-Atlantean time; Luther, even though he was transferred out
of the 4th into the 5th, had a soul
standing right in the 4th post-Atlantean time but
rejected everything external, he wanted by contrast to create
everything which had nothing to do with external work and
external human activities — a soul based solely between
the formless inner connection of the human soul and the
spiritual world, dependant on faith only.
Just think for a moment how a painter like Raphael would have
painted out of southern Catholicism, and compare how it could
be painted from a Lutheran standpoint. What would he paint? He
would paint a Christ figure somewhat like Albrecht
Dürer's; or he would paint a religious person in
whose physiognomic expression one would recognise a soul with
nothing in common regarding the material surroundings and the
objects within this environment into which it has been
imposed.
Thus one age connects to another. In the present time mankind
has quite different ideas. This you see in paintings where
Christ is depicted as a person amongst the people: “Come,
Master Jesus, be our guest” — as human and equal as
possible:
198a
Fritz Uhde “Come, Master Jesus, be our guest”
Berlin, National Gallery.
In
our painting (197) we have a group of Bishops, learned church
fathers, and in the middle the obvious sign, the symbol. This
points to the supersensible world; the Trinity is concretely
included.
197
Raphael Camera della Segnatura, The “Disputa”
Let
us lift out this “Trinity” in particular. We have
another painting which represents this Trinity on its own.
198
Disputa: Segment: Threefold/Trinity aspect
At
the top we see the Father God, below that, Holy Ghost and the
Son. You behold these members as concrete content of the
future, the present, taken out of the past. It would not have
been appropriate in the world view of that present time to mix
the blessed souls of the dead directly with the observation of
the outer visible world. However Raphael used, in the sense of
the imagination of that time, what he observed as the truth,
the free view in the widths of natural realms. To a certain
extend he had to express the blatant obviousness that filled
the space was not the truth; but the truth places them within
the space. Thus we have at the bottom — you still notice
the line of the horizon — the width, infinity within the
expanding perspective. To a certain extent protest is expressed
against representing nature at present as a purely sense
perceptible image.
Raphael didn't simply arrive at this image and hit upon the
composition. In order for it to become clear, let us consider
two of Raphael's preliminary sketches towards the painting's
gradual development:
199
Drawing for “Disputa”
Imagine the entire story, from the time Raphael came to Rome
roundabout the time Julius II called him to execute the
commission in 1507, 1508, and try include this into the painting
which he had in his imagination. Gradually he was first
instructed by Julius II; gradually a relationship developed in
him between space, nature and the supersensible and sensible
aspects in the human group, how it had to be.
200
Sketch for “Disputa” Section: the church teachers,
in crayon (Windsor, Königliche Bibliothek)
Also the other sketch refers
more to the lower part than the first sketch, with still
incomplete indications. You see it hasn't come into its own.
What Raphael came to was this: he had to really imagine himself
into that time and the relationship between the spiritual world
and nature. In olden times, still up to the 9th
Century, there was still a clear imagination of the
relationship between the human past and the natural present.
The people before the 9th Century — as
grotesque as it may sound to mankind today — didn't think
that when something was happening to them, it was by chance;
no, they knew that when something happened to them it was
because of the events into which they were being spun was where
the dead were living, connected to them through karma. Before
the 9th century the events which surrounded us place
the dead before us. Such images diminished gradually and
remained in the past as I have characterised for you in the
16th Century.
Returning once more to the 9th Century we arrive at
an imagination which needs consideration: a timely separation
between the natural- and the spiritual world was not apparent
for these ancient folk. Nature was at the same time a
continuation — before the 9th Century, mind
you — a continuation of the spiritual world. Already
during the Greek times the human being had introduced their own
I into their world view, by using thinking. Raphael was painting
— he expressed this in the upper part of the canvas in
the image later called “Disputa” even though
certainly nothing was being disputed — and introduced a
female figure out of the symbolism of that time with the motto:
DIVINARUM RERUM NOTITIA = divinely written comment. Basically
before the 9th Century the world view included the
“divinely written comment” and nature was like a
wave of the godlike world extending below to where mankind
found itself.
208
Vignette: Divanarum Rerum Notitia
210
Vignette: Causarum Cognitio
This entire notion, as I've mentioned, was pushed back to the
East and the echo remained within the imagination, like a
testament painted by Raphael from the 4th
post-Atlantic epoch. In those days it was deliberated from the
south to establish the kingdom of Christ on the physical plane
itself as a real empire of power. Pope Julius II had even, like
other similar personalities, written on his flag what he really
wanted. He wanted to really establish this which could not
happen because Luther came along, as did Calvin and Zwingli. He
wanted to create the foundation for Christ's Empire in this
world. He dared not say so. One can usually see this in such
personalities as something esoteric. Julius II did not dare go
through Italy as a commander in order to harness the Italians
to his empire. He said it differently. He said he was going
through Italy as a commander in order to free the Italian folk.
This is what was said. In later times it was said something or
other should be done to free the folk while this only hid the
real goal. At the time however, many believed Julius II went
through Italy to free the separate Italian nations. It didn't
occur to him, just as little as it occurred or could in anyway
occur to Woodrow Wilson, to set some or other folk
free.
Now, you see, here we have this immense border, one might say,
between the two time periods: the backward push to everything
southerly. Retained from this is the division in the world view
in the Greek time. It was clearly as follows: What had streamed
through nature as deeds of the dead was no longer present when
people developed spiritual powers in themselves, unfolding it
in their souls; it then doesn't become DIVINARUM RERUM NOTITIA,
not something “written up as godly things” but
becomes CAUSARUM COGNITIO — and attains “direct
knowledge of causes in the world”. Here care should be
taken not to want an interpretation of nature in its totality
as an outcome. To come to an idea of nature — this Julius
II felt compelled to shout in thunderous words — an
imagination was to be made to show that the sun rises, the
morning- and evening glow exists as do the stars, and just as
people did in the 5th post-Atlantean epoch, it meant
lying. In fact one denied that the souls of the dead were
within the Trinity which was really something capable of
imaginative expression by looking back to the dead souls,
David, Abraham, Paul, Peter and express the Holy Trinity.
Julius said: Leave away nature and the old Eons, only depict
the youngest Eons! Do you want to rely on yourselves? If you
want to develop through only human forces, depend only on what
is inherent in the physical body, then you arrive at an
external science regarding the outer nature of people, a
science only in so far as the human being has no connection
with the endless expanse of the world, but is hemmed in,
interwoven within the boundaries it sets itself.
This is roughly what Julius II told Raphael: If you want to
paint what the human being through his own soul faculties know
about humanity then you must not paint the people out of an
endless perspective in nature, but include the people, whether
genial or wise, in their self-made borders. You must include
them in halls to show: from these rooms where the world is
governed — because Julius wanted to have the world
depicted as it would have become had no Luther arrived, nor a
Zwingli, or any Calvinist. — If you want to paint the
world as it is governed from these rooms, then paint on the one
side the reality existing in the breadth of nature and on the
other side, what people can find if they only sought forces
from within their own souls. Then you may not paint nature but
paint the people in their self-imposed borders.
This is what we have when we allow the contrasting aspects in
the image to work on us ... the so-called “School of
Athens”.
202
The “School of Athens” (Rome, Vatican Press)
This painting, later becoming known as the “School of
Athens”, was often painted over in the course of time and
so the man standing in the middle had his book painted over
with “Ethics” then later with “Time”
— that was painted even later. The painting is in many
ways ruined and one can't find the true image of the original
painting today in Rome. In Raphael's time it was never called
“The School of Athens”, this only happened later
and then theories developed about it. We can imagine it
essentially thus: truly the world is measured through the
changed painting (197) when we peer into the endless realms of
space and imagine nature not with obvious senses but permeated
with everything existing in eternity and temporality, permeated
with that which has gone through the gate of death. Taking
knowledge from within one's own soul and representing it in
everything coming together, like these wise men, here (202);
the heavenly knowledge which can only be found built up within
oneself, is represented in a personality which points upwards
(203). No inartistic stupidity is needed to see Plato in this
figure. (See below)
You
can imagine the following: the gesture of the rising hand
represents the word being spoken by the figure on the right.
The personality on the right begins to speak as if his
expression is translated into words. Everything originating by
itself in the human soul can only be truly imagined if it is
contained within an enclosed space, where one remains within
oneself. If one searches within for an image of nature then
nothing other than an abstract image of nature will be found,
much like the Copernican world view represents which is not a
picture of concrete nature.
Thus Raphael took the task from Julius II and placed it before
the godly experience which could live by itself in the human
soul in the beginning of the 5th post-Atlantic
epoch. Here everything of worldly science is grouped, but
worldly science raised up to divine concepts, to intellectual
understanding of the godly. On analysis the seven free arts
appear: grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, geometry, arithmetic,
astronomy and music.
Up
to the culminating expression you can find the whole of worldly
science applied to the divine and how this is expressed by the
human word — here the opposites of looking and speaking
are alive — expressed in the image itself. Un-artistic,
amateurishly learned chitchat saw the entire Greek philosophy
in the same image. That is unnecessary and has no relevance to
the artwork we have been speaking about and of which we finally
want to point out: it shows us how this painting, in the sense
of that time, represents a true human experience — an
experience which the soul discovers when it is allowed to find
wisdom within itself regarding mankind.
We
have more details of this painting which I want to show
you:
204
The “School of Athens”, section: Left half.
205
The “School of Athens”, Section: Right half.
If
you allow yourself to be drawn in more you will recognise the
right sided figures are linked to the central main figure who
is entering into speech; here on the right (205) we have
everything which depends more on Inspiration, and to the left,
(204) it touches more on Imagination and its equivalent.
We
have one more image of the central figures:
203
The “School of Athens”, section: Central
figures
The
opposite of looking and speaking is presented. Let us be clear
about it — the present time can only be understood if we
try to throw more and more of such glances into the past which
we can do by experiencing such paintings in an artistic sense.
Our time is the time in which something returns to itself. In
our time there is a return in Europe — Central Europe,
Northern Europe and in certain moods in Western Europe —
of karmic connections with the European development of the
9th Century. This hasn't become particularly
observable to most people, actually in fact, not at all. What
happens today takes place out of necessity, the opposite manner
used to spiritually grasp what Europe's destiny had to be in
the 9th century. What had been pushed back to the
East at that time was the spiritual world, so now it has once
again to be manifested on the physical plane. The moods of the
9th Century after Christ are now reappearing in
western European, in Central and Northern Europe. Out of
Europe's east will develop something like moods out of the
terrible chaos, spreading out in something like moods which
will mysteriously remind us of the 16th Century.
Only out of the combined harmonising of the 9th and
16th Centuries will mysteries originate which to
some extent can give a degree of clarity for present day
humanity who wants to rise to its own understanding of
evolution.
It
is remarkable to see how in the 16th Century
everything most secret and mysterious in nature, man and God,
was visibly represented outwardly in art. The holy secret of
the Trinity we have found in the most meaningful images of the
world set before our souls. The opposite appears at the same
time — the Protestant-Evangelistic mood which totally
denies these holy secrets being able to share this historic
period. At intervals Herman Grimm, a truly northern Lutheran
spirit, speaks about the thoughts his contemporaries have
regarding Christ, thoughts they treasure as wholly good within
their souls — the exact opposite in Raphael's mood when he
painted the world.
You
see, at the beginning of the 16th Century the
Reformation brought evolution further which became the world's
lot, even in Rome, in the sphere of Julius II, of the popes.
But how? It became the lot of the world that people wanted to
reflect about the supersensible worlds as if they were visible
but visible through human development. As a result — this
Herman Grimm discovered rightly — the Pauline
Christianity became a particular problem for Raphael and his
contemporaries — yes, even the figure of Paul himself. It
can be said that up to the 16th Century Christianity
was far more permeated by what one could call the Peter
Christianity — Peter who saw the supersensible and
sensible worlds as undivided, experiencing in the sensible
world the supersensible within it, finding the supersensible in
the sense perceptions. The extrasensory world disappeared from
it. People were aware of this right up to the 16th
Century. The experience of the Damascus secret living in Paul
as a seer, and the figure of Paul himself, became a problem. As
a result Raphael tried in his later development to depict, and
include, Paul's figure in various paintings. It can be said:
from the south a Reformation wanted to be established with the
aim to depict the Pauline vision in the world in such a way as
I set before you now, as it lived in Raphael's paintings which
originated through the inspiration of Julius II.
Paul was a problem for him. You appreciate this when you
research Paul's form in Raphael's other paintings. You see a
visual expression of the music of the spheres in the
“Saint Cecile”.
196
Raphael: The Saint Cecile (Bologna Art Gallery).
Naturally it is inaccurately expressed. Left, in the corner, is
the practical shape of Paul. Raphael made a study of Paul in a
painterly way. Repeatedly Paul posed a problem. Why? —
Because Paul's quest originates from within him as a human
individuality through which he strives to have sight, penetrate
into the sight. Here we see it in his whole attitude, in his
gesture: Paul as he participates in something self-evident to
others as a seeker. He develops both sides, therefore if it
comes down to him, he shows Christian revelation differently.
As Paul understands — you see it here, how Paul teaches
— it became a problem for Raphael.
Now
we have another painting: Paul speaking in Athens.
234
Raphael: The sermon of Paul in Athens (London, South Kensington
Museum)
You
can see Raphael studied Paul. What did Paul become for him?
— The hero, the spiritual hero of the Reformation who
should have succeeded from the south, but did not succeed. This
impulse was pushed back and later Jesuitism from the South was
put in the place of the Reformation — more about that at
another time. Paul should have established the Kingdom of
Christ on earth as foreseen by Julius II.
Now
characterise for yourself the two Paul heads, which we have
before us now and allow it to really work on us.
235
(extract from 196) Head of Paul out of “The Saint Cecile”.
These are heads studied by Raphael in which he wanted to depict
through the physiognomy a gaze penetrating the secrets of the
spiritual Christian world, into the spiritual secrets enabling
words to outwardly pronounce these secrets; we have in Paul the
binding link between the world of causes and the world into
which only those with blessed vision have access, the
supersensible world. Paul is looking and teaching, the
connecting link between the world of the 5th
post-Atlantean epoch and the ancient spiritual time. Remind
yourselves of your consideration of the Paul physiognomy, the
Pauline gestures right up to the movement of the fingers
— here only the arm is lifted — and be reminded of
that ...
236
(Extract from 234) Head of Paul from “Paul's sermon in
Athens”.
...
consider these and then look once more at the figure in the
so-called “School of Athens”:
203
The central figure of from “The School of
Athens”
...
and compare that to the two heads of Paul which we have looked
at (235, 236) with the heads here (203) on your right and you
have such a personality in whom seeing has become words, one
might say: because Paul, who grew out of seeing the results of
the Mystery of Damascus and became the orator of Christianity,
made his pact of compromise with what can be found in the
Causarum Cognitio when the experience of the physical causal
world is elevated into a relation of possible experiences of
divine things. As a result you will experience something like
the constant “Signatur” which wafts through the
“Camera della Segnatura” when you look over the
image which later was called the “Disputa”, to what
is called the “School of Athens”. In the
“Disputa” is the truth, the spiritual truth in a
nature filled space; glancing over to the other, opposite wall,
so companions and visionaries encounter Paul the teacher who
points to the worldly learning from which everything can arise
which the human soul can find within itself. Looking at the
fresco, which is the so-called “School of
Athens”:
202
The “School of Athens” Camera della Segnatura
(Rome, Vatikan Press)
...so one finds a soul living in the central figure with a
content which is painted in the opposite fresco:
197
Raphael Camera della Segnatura, The “Disputa” (Rome,
Vatican)
...
then one roughly has the connection. Take the one wall —
everything that is within the soul, all one does not see except
as the outer bodily aspect, that very aspect is revealed on the
opposite wall, on the fresco of the so-called
“Disputa”.
I
would like to say: if you could see into the souls of these two
people painted on the one wall, then you will see what lives in
the souls of these two people on the opposite wall, on the
fresco. More about this later.
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