Devil or the local Jewish merchant? //badda bing bang
Kidding. I don’t know what it is, but I do think that the artist knew it was there - after all, he would’ve spent days looking at it, and paintings come together in layers.
I don’t know about that. If it is meant to be face (which I doubt, but if…), it is meant to be a hidden one. He could not make it too clear obvious or his patrons would simply tell him to take it out (or have him burned at the stake for devil worship). It woul dneed to vague and ill-defined, just for deniability.
Drawing something crap and drawing something obscure are entirely different.
As I mentioned earlier, this is buon fresco and does not come together in layers – that section of painting was whipped up in less than a day.
The Reuters story seems to me to be a classic example of journalistic oversimplification. For one thing, this isn’t a breaking story - Chiara Frugoni published full details of her theory in the August issue of the Burlington Magazine.
Moreover, her actual views as set out in that article were hedged around with a number of caveats. She realises that there isn’t any scholarly concensus as to whether Giotto was responsible for the Death of St Francis and so carefully avoids committing herself on that specific point. She also realises that whoever was responsible, he wouldn’t necessarily have painted that particular bit of the fresco. She also isn’t convinced that the ‘horns’ are deliberate and so she isn’t sure that it’s a devil.
And, personally, I’m not convinced that any of it was intentional.
FWIW this is what Teh Devillllooks like in Giotto’s world, and other junior devils.
Huh.
Seeing the second link makes me think that maybe there is a devil / demon deliberately painted in the clouds. The two leftmost people both resemble the profile devil face.
He appears to be overdoing it on the colloidal silver. Also, he’s ever got some sort of bizarre venereal disease or he’s giving birth to a full grown man.
can u put a circle around it and post the pic on here?
ummm can u pull the pic up and circle where its at and post it on here? thanks
Link in post 4.
Can’t post pics on the board.
I personally don’t see the devil.
I see Lenin.
For people who still haven’t seen it, I’ve cropped and rotated the portion that shows the ‘face’ (I’ve included the ‘horn’ too) here.
Defecating one, presumably. I’m not sure whence that particular bit of imagery came, but it also showed up about a century later in Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights.
If it showed up in Bosch, then nobody sane is sure where it came from.
Am I the only one seeing two distinct faces there?
How do you know the second “face” wasn’t intentional? Oddly enough, there seems to be a notch in the middle of the upper lip which makes it look like the face of a lion or tiger, aided by the parallel strokes being “whiskers”. Or it could be that the artist painted over something he did previously, but traces remained which can still be discerned.
I don’t think this is a valid argument. If he wanted to make it indistinct, that was certainly within his power.
In my opinion, it’s more probable that the reported face was put there intentionally. As to the second “face”, that’s so indistinct it’s more probable that really is a case of pareidolia.
Drawing something crappy and drawing something indistinct are separate things. That’s a crappy face.
I also see two very discernible faces-one is a larger one behind the “devil” face, the mouth being the area around his ear and a larger chin under the devil’s chin. Second face also has a wide open mouth with teeth on top. You can see it here
It is almost certainly on purpose. It was not unusual for artists of the time to place little faces and other “easter eggs”, to use a modern term, into large works like this. Michelangelo in particular is notorious for this. It is almost certainly NOT a devil, it is likely that if he intended it to be easily caught it represents a nature spirit of some sort. These forces, usually debased forms of pagan deities, were thought to be present, but subservient to god and his angels. These beings were often utilized to fill space, express less than reverent sentiments, or illustrate God’s superiourity over earlier pagan religions.