artfractures

journal issue 03 spring 2010

My Name is Charles Saatchi and I am an Artoholic Martin Boland Interview: Lan Yuan-Hung Robert Priseman Interview: Kimsooja Laura Earley Stephen Carley 12 x 12 Andrea Hadley Johnson La Camra-Stylo Today Sam Ishii-Gonzales

Pythagorean Theorems and Renaissance Ideals of Friendship in The Ambassadors Ramesh Ramsahoye & John Finlay The discipline of art history and the practice of art criticism Matt Bowman

Artfractures Quarterly | Issue 03 | Spring 2010 From the Editor

Welcome to Artfractures Quarterly Spring issue. We have continued along the same lines as our winter issue by including and contrasting art historical essays, exhibition reviews, and artist interviews. We would like to extend a warm welcome to Catherine Crawford and Martin Boland who have generously agreed to join our editorial board. This quarter includes a fascinating article by Matt Bowman on the distinction between the discipline of art history and the practice of art criticism. Following this is a review of the book My Name is Charles Saatchi and I am an Artaholic. We also feature pieces on the work of three fascinating artists, Lan Yuan-Hung, Kimsooja and Stephen Carley: The new change to our journal is the adaptation of the lm review section into a lm theory section under the guidance of Sam Ishii-Gonzales. The Quarterly wishes to thank all those who continue to support us at Artfractures. We hope you enjoy this issue as much as we have enjoyed making it and encourage you to pass on the edition to anyone you feel may gain pleasure and interest from it. John Finlay Editor

Artfractures Quarterly | Issue 04 | Spring 2010 Artfractures Chairman Elizabeth Cowling Professor Emeritus of Twentieth Century European Art, Edinburgh University Publisher Robert Priseman Editor Dr John Finlay Designer John Wallett Editorial Advisory Panel Fr. Martin Boland, Dean, Brentwood Cathedral, UK Anthony Bond OAM, Head Curator International Art, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, AUS Dr Matthew Bowman, Art Historian, Curator and Editor of Rebus: A Journal of Art History and Theory, UK Dr Ben Craneld, Lecturer, Birkbeck College, London, UK Dr Catherine Crawford, Lecturer, University of Essex, UK Sam Ishii-Gonzales, Principle Faculty Member in the Department of Media Studies and Film, The New School in New York City, USA Andrea Hadley Johnson, Curator at Derby Museums and Art Gallery, UK Dr Steve Swindells, Reader at Hudderseld University in Fine Art, UK

Artfractures Quarterly | Issue 03 | Spring 2010

In this issue Art History: The goods of friends are common: Pythagorean Theorems and Renaissance Ideals of Friendship in Holbeins The Ambassadors Ramesh Ramsahoye and John Finlay p.5 Art Critical Essay: Waiting For Time to Tell (or Not) An essay exploring the intersection or distinction between the discipline of art history and the practice of art criticism. Matt Bowman p.17 Book Review: My Name is Charles Saatchi and I am an Artoholic Martin Boland p.25 Private Public Interface: An interview with the artist Lan Yuan-Hung Robert Priseman p.28 Kimsooja - Art Monthly Talking Art interview, Tate Modern, 20 February 2010 Laura Earley p.31 Stephen Carley:12 x 12 Andrea Hadley Johnson p.33 Film Theory: La Camra-Stylo Today: David Lynchs Inland Empire (2006) Sam Ishii-Gonzales p.39 Contributors p.42 Notes for submissions p.43 Front cover photograph by John Wallett Back cover: Liberty by Stephen Carley

Artfractures Quarterly | Issue 04 | Spring 2010 Art History

The goods of friends are common: Pythagorean Theorems and Renaissance Ideals of Friendship in Holbeins The Ambassadors
Ramesh Ramsahoye and John Finlay

Ramesh Ramsahoye and John Finlay

Hans Holbein, The Ambassadors, 1533, oil on panel, National Gallery, London

Pythagorass contribution to ancient Greek thought and mathematics had a profound inuence upon the thinking of Aristotle and Platothe founding fathers of Western rationalism and philosophical enquiry [1]. His concept of a universe governed by mathematics has proved to be one of the most enduring and inuential ideas ever and the scientic methodologies attributed to him continue to shape the world we live in. So we are all, to a degree, Pythagoreans, but at the time when Holbeins The Ambassadors was painted in 1533, the sitters, Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selves, were amongst a group intellectuals who aligned themselves more directly with Pythagorass theories. There is abundant evidence in Holbeins painting to support the idea that the work resonates with distinctly Pythagorean concepts and, equally importantly, that the picture is a friendship painting related to a particular ideal of intimate male amity based on classical knowledge and philosophy.

Artfractures Quarterly | Issue 03 | Spring 2010 As Christiane Joost-Gaugier has argued in her groundbreaking study, Pythagoras and Renaissance Europe, the impact of Pythagorean theory upon Renaissance thought and culture has often been underestimated in the modern era, especially with regard to the visual arts, due to our inclination to isolate scientic and philosophical disciplines [2]. Perhaps the best way to test such a hypothesis is to begin by discussing the ornate oor upon which the two protagonists stand. Holbeins elaborate oor design was evidently based on the Cosmati pavement, adored with inlaid marble, at Westminster Abbey. To date, scholarly interpretations have focussed on the symbolism of the various stilllife objects represented on the table/tagre in the painting, the distorted skull in the foreground and their possible relationship to the patterned oor itself. They have not however, illuminated the importance of the oor design in relation to the positioning of the gures.

Odericus Cosmati, Pavement, marble, 1268, Westminster Abbey, London

The inscription on the Westminster Abbey pavement reads as follows: In the year of Christ one thousand two hundred and twelve and sixth minus four, King Henry III, the Church of Rome, Odoricus and the Abbot laid down these porphyry stones. If the reader go carefully round all this he will come to the end of the Primum Mobile. A hedge is three years, you add dogs and horses and men, stags and crows, eagles, a wild sea monster, the world: each triples the years of the one before it. This spherical ball shows the Macrocosmic archetype. [3]

Central roundel of the Westminster Abbey pavemen

The reference to a spherical ball most probably refers to the central roundel made of a marble disc and portraying the macrocosmic archetype. In medieval cosmology
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Artfractures Quarterly | Issue 04 | Spring 2010 this referred specically to the concept of the universe in the mind of God before creation, which preceded the macrocosm of the sensible world. Although the onyx disc has been read as a representation of the earth itself [4], the craftsman who built the pavement (named in the inscription as Orodicus Cosmati) clearly used the naturally occurring patterns inherent within the marble to represent this essental substance of the universe before its nal order and form was ordained by God. The irregular but rhythmic shapes recall medieval images of the cosmos, and it is interesting to note that the design of the central roundelproducing an apparent order arising from chaotic permutationsbears similarities to the globe in a medieval parchment from a Bible Moralise (c. 1220-30) showing God as Architect of the Universe.

Left: God as Architect of the Universe, from a Bible Moralise, c. 1220-30 Illumination on parchment, sterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna Right: God as Architect of the Universe, from a French Bible Moralise, in the British Library

Another medieval image of God as Architect of the Universe relates compositionally and thematically to the oors in Westminster Abbey and Holbeins portrait, featuring at its centre the archetypal globeagain containing irregular shapesto which Christ has begun to give geometric form. The quartrilobe mandorla is also akin to the four minor spheres set within the square at Westminster, with four angels taking the place of the outer circles of the pavement. It is signicant that medieval concepts of a macrocosmic archetype have their origins in Pythagorean cosmology, in particular passages from Platos Timaeus [5]. During the Renaissance, however, the most lucid expression of these Pythagorean ideas about creation is to be found in Nicholas of Cusas On Learned Ignorance: In creating the world, God used arithmetic, geometry, and likewise astronomy. (We ourselves also use these arts when we investigate the comparative relationships of objects, of elements, and of motions.) For through arithmetic God united things. Through geometry He shaped them, in order that they would thereby attain rmness, stability, and mobility in accordance with their conditions. Through music He proportioned things in such a way that there is not more earth in earth than water in water, air in air, and re in re, so that no one element is altogether reducible to another.... And so, God, who created all things in number, weight, and measure, arranged the elements in an admirable order. [6] The creation myth behind the design of the Westminster pavement has, nevertheless, been slightly modied in The Ambassadors. The positioning of the feet of both gures
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Artfractures Quarterly | Issue 03 | Spring 2010 deliberately placed so that Dintevilles foot is planted in the centre of a circle whereas De Selve places his on a circumferenceechoes Plotinuss Neo-Platonic account of the individuals soul and its distinct relationship with the cosmos and the universal consciousness that is God, of which all human beings are part: All beings may be thought of as centres uniting at one central centre...They are all one because they share the same centre... [7] As well as referencing Plotinuss concept of individual consciousnesses radiating from a common centre, the precise positioning of the mens feet is highly suggestive of the Pythagorean monad, which is denoted by a circle with a dot in the centre.

Holbein, The Ambassadors, detail, possibly indicating The Pythagorean Monad

According to Diogenes Laertius, The rst principle of all things is the monad...Out of the monad and indenate dyad come the numbers, out of the numbers come the points, out of these the lines, from which (are formed) the plane gures; from the plane gures (are formed) the solid gures, from these the sensible bodies, whose elements are four: re, water, earth, air... [8] This cosmic rst principle is discreetly indicated for viewers at the Chateau of Polisy by their hosts, who seem to be alluding to Pythagorean creation theory. Holbein informs the viewer that his two ambassadors are not only conscious of their oneness, but of their connection to each other, to the universal mind, and to God the rst creator. Now that we have briey explored a number of Pythagorean ideas in relation to the oor design of The Ambassadors, it is possible to turn our attention to the still-life objects themselves, which, as many scholars claim, refer to the trivium and quadrivium of the liberal arts. Pythagoras is said to have been the rst to group arithmetic, astronomy, music and geometry into the quadrivium [9], so the items situated on the tagre may signify his achievements and observations in relation to these scholarly elds. During Holbeins time, music was considered a branch of mathematics as it was governed by precise ratios and scales giving rise to the effects of harmony. Pythagoras made the astute observation that the length of a string affected the note and concluded that measurement, number and proportion lay behind the beauty and harmony of music. In Pythagorean cosmology, the distance between the planets was equivalent to musical ratios and, as they revolved, they produced the music of the spheres. Three still life objects on the lower shelf of the tablethe pipes, the strings and the compasscan also seen in a contemporary print from Franchino Gaffurios De Harmonia Musicorum Instrumentorum, a treatise on musical harmony illustrating Pythagorass important musical discoveries.
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Left: Plate from F. Gaffurio, De Harmonia Musicorum Instrumentorum, 1518 Right: Intarsia panel from the Studiolo of Duke Federigo da Montefeltro in the Ducalo Palace, Gubbio, possibly designed by Franceso di Giorgio, c. 1479-82

Gaffurio is known for his adherence to Pythagorean musical theory and, as Jan Herlinger has pointed out, Pythagorean tuning was traditionally associated with the structure of the cosmos, and with the harmony of the human microcosm. [10] The pipes, compass and strings depicted in Gaffurios book are the emblems of a theorist committed to the Pythagorean view of music and its relationship to the cosmos, so when we see the same objects in The Ambassadors it is perfectly feasible to surmise that the two diplomats, Dinteville and De Selve, held similar ideas and values, were familiar with Pythagorean learning and, in relation to the objects surrounding them, wished to present themselves and mankind as a microcosm of the entire universe. We see a similar grouping of instruments of measure, proportion and harmony in the Studiolo of Federigo da Montefeltro where they evoke the erudite Dukes familiarity with Pythagorean learning. Scientic instruments associated with the observation of celestial bodies on the upper portion of the table are juxtaposed with more worldly items such as musical instruments and books below. The way in which the gures of Dinteville and De Selve bridge these areas is entirely in keeping with the Pythagorean concept of man as a mediator between the earthly and heavenly realms, a supposition clearly articulated by the Neo-Platonist Pico della Mirandola [11]: ...Man is the intermediary between creatures, that he is the familiar of the gods above him as he is the lord of the beings beneath him; that, by the acuteness of his senses, the inquiry of his reason and the light of his intelligence, he is the interpreter of nature, set midway between the timeless unchanging and the ux of time; the living union (as the Persians say), the very marriage hymn of the world. [12] Given the numerous references to cosmology in Holbeins painting, and to the liberal arts education betting the gentlemanly Ambassadors, it is highly likely that the mathematics text on the lower shelf is similarly intended to draw the viewers attention to the achievements of Pythagoras.

Artfractures Quarterly | Issue 03 | Spring 2010

Holbein, The Ambassadors, Detail

The square extends from the pages of the book in such a way as to convey the notion that mathematics gives us our square. Given that many of the objects on display are related in some way to a branch of mathematics, it is highly likely that the squares mathematical origins are being highlighted [13]. As John North has elucidated, Holbeins painting reveals all kinds of mathematical and geometrical patterns [14]. It has, however, been overlooked that the precise positioning of the Ambassadors feet demonstrates an ancient Pythagorean method for obtaining a true square - Theorem 12 of Book 3 of Euclids Elements. [15]

Holbein, The Ambassadors, Detail

The square separating the pages of the arithmetic book would appear to reect contemporary values with respect to how individuals should conduct their lives. Indeed, a contemporaneous brass square of 1507 [16], discovered beneath the foundation stone of Baal Bridge, near Limerick, in Ireland, and bearing the inscription I will striue to lieu with loue & care upon the leul by the square, clearly demonstrates that the symbolism attributed to this measuring instrument in the eighteenth century [17] is of considerably earlier origin and was certainly current in Holbeins day.

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Artfractures Quarterly | Issue 04 | Spring 2010

The Baal Bridge Square, 1507

Inscription: I. WILL STRIUE. TO. LIUE.--WITH. LOUE. & CARE .--UPON. THE LEUL.--BY. THE. SQUARE. The supposed division and discordance highlighted by the book and faulty instruments on the tagre are surely not connected to any particular historical circumstance [18], but rather to the imperfections of the worldmaterial and visualand contrasted with the mathematical perfection of the heavens. This binary opposition was intrinsic to contemporary Pythagorean understanding of the universe, summarized by Marsilio Ficino in his Platonic Theology... For things above the soul they think of as united rather than numbered, but things under the soul as indeed numbered but totally discordant among themselves. [19] Holbein and his two sitters were also undoubtedly aware of the idea that the mimetic arts can enlighten and guide us towards a knowledge of the good, a fundamental part of Platos Republic and Neo-Platonic philosophies in general. For example, in order to know that a Pythagorean hexad, rather than, say, a pentad (ve-pointed star), lies behind the skull, we have to use deductive reasoning.

The Pythagorean Hexad

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Artfractures Quarterly | Issue 03 | Spring 2010 We need to calculate where the lines would converge etc. In other words, we know that a hexad is there without needing to see it. Holbein ingeniously reminds the viewer of the higher form of knowledge promoted by Plato in which the mind engages with pure concepts rather than the mere examples of those concepts existing in the sensible world. Platos comments in The Republic make these points very clear: You know too that they make use of and argue about visible gures, though they are not really thinking about them, but about the originals which they resemble...The actual gures they draw or model...these they treat as images only, the real objects of their investigation being invisible except to the eye of reason. [20] The hexad therefore invokes a level of knowledgethat of the goodwhich is beyond that of mere empirical observation [21]. Through his concealment of the hexad Holbein steers the viewer to a superior mode of thought which Plato called dialectic: ...when one tries to get at what each thing is in itself by the exercise of dialectic, relying on reason without any aid from the senses, and refuses to give up until one has grasped by pure thought what the good is in itself, one is at the summit of the intellectual realm... [22] A clear understanding of the good or ideal as a contemporary concept in Holbeins paintingand represented by the liberal arts on the tagre (areas of learning which lead us to a knowledge of the good)is crucial to assessing the special nature of the relationship between the men that the portrait documents. Pythagoreans often advocated intimate types of friendship. According to Porphyry in his early biography of Pythagoras, His friends he loved exceedingly, being the rst to declare that The goods of friends are common, and that A friend is another self. [23] Rather than signifying worldly indulgence as part of a vanitas message, are these objects in fact things held in common, exemplifying a sharing and communion to be equated with virtuous living? Aristotle also maintained that material possessions were to a degree necessary for the acquisition of virtue in order for the individual to live a complete life, and dened the happy man as one who is active in accordance with complete virtue, and who is adequately furnished with external goods... [24] Knowledge of the good is, according to Aristotle, essential for what he terms perfect friendship: For these people each alike wish good for the other qua good, and they are good in themselves. And it is those who desire the good of their friends sake that are most truly friends, because each loves the other for what he is, and not for any incidental quality. [25] Although Aristotle made a strong argument against Platos concept of an ideal good, which was part of his theory of forms in The Republic, he nevertheless found more acceptable the Pythagorean concept of unity as a form of the good: Nor will the good be any more good by being eternal, if a long-lasting white thing is no whiter than an ephemeral one. On this point the Pythagoreans...seem to have a more plausible doctrine, for they place unity in their column of goods. [26] For Aristotle, higher forms of relationship are to be esteemed and distinguished from friendships based on utility or pleasure, where the expectation of benet hinders the bonds between individuals. Aristotles theory of the good also echoes Pythagorean
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Artfractures Quarterly | Issue 04 | Spring 2010 ideas in supposing that true friendship is only possible with a select few. The emphasis in Pythagorean thought on a special closeness and intimacy in male friendship nds its Renaissance equal in Baldesar Castigliones characterization of the ideal courtier. ...without this perfect friendship men would be the unhappiest of all creatures...here in our midst may be found more than one pair of friends, whose love is constant and without deceit, and bound to endure in all its intimacy until death...This is what happens when one chooses for a friend someone of similar ways, apart from the inuence of the stars...I also believe that the bond of friendship should not involve more than two people...The reason for this is that, as you know, harmony is more difcult to achieve with several instruments than with two. I wish our courtier, therefore, to have a sincere and intimate friend of his own. [27] On balance, it appears likely that the model of friendship and equality propagated by Holbein in The Ambassadors is highly sympathetic to Pythagorean idealsreinforced by an inherent compositional balance within the picture, something that is more than simply an aesthetic, visual trope deployed by the artist. Here Dinteville and De Selve act as visual parentheses representing politics (the state) and ethics (the church) respectively, in a manner which emphasises the Pythagorean goal of effacing of all rivalry and contention from true friendship. [28] The Ambassadors seem concerned to appear as universal men, schooled in diverse areas of learning, connected with the cosmos and drawn together by Pythagorean bonds of friendship, dened as ...an effort to achieve a certain divine union, or communion of intellect with the divine soul. [29] At the time, this sophisticated and recondite concept of friendship, grounded in classical philosophy, was expressed in almost gnostic terms by Pico della Mirandola... ...like earthly Mercuries, we shall y on winged feet to embrace that most blessed mother and there enjoy the peace we have longed for: that most holy peace, that indivisible union, that seamless friendship through which all souls will not only be at one in that one mind which is above every mind, but, in a manner which passes expression, will really be one, in the most profound depths of being. This is the friendship which the Pythagoreans say is the purpose of all philosophy. This is the peace which God established in the high places of the heaven and which the angels, descending to earth, announced to men of good will, so that men, ascending through this peace to heaven, might become angels. [30] This model of friendship suggests that the objects on the tagre are not simply the worldly possessions of ambitious men, eager to promote an image of piety in the early 1530s. Rather, Jean de Dinteville and Georges De Selve are portrayed as individuals aspiring to the beauty and perfection of the self through knowledge (gnosis) of the good. As we have seen, the two diplomats could not possibly have ignored Pythagorean ideals and to them Holbein was without question not just a mere artisan, but someone who could dene and present them in relation to theories of the cosmos drawn from the greatest thinkers of antiquity and their own time. Ultimately, Renaissance portraits were not just a means of articulating social status, wealth and public image: they were also a means of afrming and conveying what we now term a sense of self . As a carefully considered and intricately constructed friendship painting, Holbeins Ambassadors offers us invaluable insights into how many Renaissance individuals viewed themselves and understood their relationship to each other, to the universe around them and to God. Today, as physicists utilize mathematics, like the early Pythagoreans, in their quest for a theory of everything and one that can connect gravity with quantum mechanics
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Artfractures Quarterly | Issue 03 | Spring 2010 the macrocosm with the microcosmthey peer backwards into time and the farthest reaches of space to explore and understand what the early Pythagoreans termed the rst principle, which scientists today choose to call a singularity. If our mathematicians and theoretical physicists eventually discover the missing equation or nd a string theory explaining the Universe in all its diversity, it might suddenly seem as familiar to us as to those Renaissance individuals, who attempted long ago to join what is above (the celestial) with what is below (the terrestrial), and uncover the secrets of both heaven and earth. Notes
There is some debate about the precise nature and extent of Pythagorass contribution to ancient Greek thought. Although no works by Pythagoras survive, his inuence on philosophical thinking and mathematical theory is nevertheless undeniable. For a critical assessment of scholarly debate surrounding the true extent of Pythagorass contribution to Greek philosophy and mathematics, see Charles H. Kahn, Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, A Brief History, Hackett Publishing Co. Ltd., Indianapolis/Cambridge, 2001, esp. Ch. 2.
[1] [2]

Christiane L. Joost-Gaugier, Pythagoras and Renaissance Europe: Finding Heaven, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009, p. xiii.

Translation taken from John North, The Ambassadors Secret: Holbein and the World of the Renaissance, Orion Books Ltd., London, 2004, pp. 208-212.
[3] [4] [5]

Ibid. p. 212.

re, water, earth and air bore some traces of their proper nature, but were in the disorganized state to be expected of anything which god has not touched, and his rst step when he set about reducing them to order was to give them a denate pattern of shape and number., Plato, Timaeus and Critias, Introduction by Desmond Lee, Penguin Classics Edition, Penguin Books, London, 1977, pp. 72-3
[6] Nicholas of Cusa, On Learned Ignorance (De Docta Ignorantia) Book II, Chapter 13, translation by Jasper Hopkins, The Arthur J. Banning Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1981, p. 99. [7]

From Plotinus, Enneads, 6.5.5, quoted in Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, Jesus and the Goddess: The Secret Teachings of the Original Christians, Harper Collins, London, 2002, p. 96.

This discussion of the monad by Diogenes Laertius from his Lives of the Eminent Philosophers is quoted in Kahn, op. cit., p. 80.
[8] [9]

Following Plato, The Republic, Book 7, just as our eyes are made for astronomy, so our ears are made for the movements of harmony, and that the two are, as the Pythagoreans say, and as we should agree, Glaucon, sister sciences. Penguin Classic Edition, translated by Desmond Lee, Penguin Books, London, 1987, p. 340. See also Kahn, op. cit., p.40.

[10] Jan Herlinger Medieval Canonics in Thomas Street Christensen, The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002, p. 182. [11] Normally referred to as a Neo-Platonist, Pico, in his famous Oration makes numerous references to Pythagoras whom he clearly regards as a higher authority than even Plato. Holbein had also painted the portrait of Sir Thomas More in 1527, who was an enthusiast of Picos philosophy and had published his biography in England. He therefore had ample opportunity whilst at the English court to become acquainted with Picos philosophical concepts and his vision of man. [12] Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man, Translated by A. Robert Caponigri, Rengery Publishing Inc., Washington, 1956, p. 3-4. [13] Much has been made of the mathematical text book, open on a page concerning division, which has been interpreted as a reference to the Reformation, a division within the church. The book, it has been

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argued, connects with the broken string on the lute and the incomplete set of pipes as further symbols of discord. Susan Foister is certain of the validity of this interpretation, see Susan Foister, Ashok Roy and Martin Wylde, Holbeins Ambassadors Making and Meaning, National Gallery Company Ltd., London, 1997, pp. 40-43. However, an examination of Pythagorean sources and of the understanding of Platonic thought articulated by Marsilio Ficino during the Renaissance suggests that the division and discord indicated by the objects on the lower shelf are to be seen as inherent features of the world as a whole.
[14]

John Norths brilliantly researched and highly imaginative book, cited above, contains numerous suggestions as to the geometric basis of Holbeins composition as well as a useful account of the mathematical ideas which inuenced the painting. However, some of the arguments posited in the text, such as Norths identication of a hexagram in the upper region of the painting seem imposed upon the image, rather than derived from it (See North, op. cit., p. 195).

Utilising this method, any triangle formed by extending two lines from a point placed anywhere on the circumference of a circle to the edges of the diameter of that circle, will be a perfect right-angled triangle. This technique was employed with spectacular results by medieval stonemasons and is related to the 47th problem of Euclid, set out in Book 1 of his Elements, also known as The Pythagorean Theorem.
[15]

Brother Furnell in the Freemasons Quarterly Review, 1842, p. 288, originally read the date on the square as 1517, but it is actually 1507.
[16] [17] [18]

Particularly as a symbol in speculative freemasonry.

It has been assumed by several commentators that these details refer to religious tensions within Europe, exacerbated by Henry VIIIs marriage to Anne Boleyn on 25th January 1533. This interpretation, it is claimed, is reinforced by the religious songbook conspicuously open on a German translation of a Catholic hymn. However, there is no reason to assume that these issues are being intimated by Dinteville and De Selve in a painting very much about themselves and their intellectual interests, containing no direct reference to their diplomatic mission in England and destined for a chateau at Polisy, not the English court.

Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, Book XVII, Ch. 2., Trans. by Michael J. B. Allen, Latin text edited by James Hankins and William Bowen, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2006, p. 21.
[19] [20] [21]

Plato, The Republic, op. cit., pp. 313-314.

For Pythagoreans, the hexad was a geometric representation of the number 6 and signied the creation of the world. It is therefore entirely appropriate as a substitute for the onyx slab denoting the archetypal macrocosm in the Westminster Abbey pavement. According to an anonymous fourth century Pythagorean text, probably by a student of Iamblichus,the universe is ensouled and harmonized by it and, thanks to it, comes by both wholeness and permanence. See, The Theology of Arithmetic, Trans. by Robin Watereld, Phanes Press, Michigan, USA, 1988, p. 76. For Pythagoreans, the hexad was also associated with marriage and the cosmic fusion of opposites, formed by the union of two triangles, one masculine and the other feminine. The number 6 which it signies was also thought to blend male (even [2]) and female (odd [3]) numbers through multiplication as opposed to the pentad, or ve pointed star, which is formed by adding the same two numbers. St. Augustine attached mystical signicance to this number in his account of the completion of Creation in The City of God, as did Philo of Alexandria in his De Opicio Mundi (III 13-14). Dinteville and De Selve would undoubtedly also have been familiar with Heinrich Cornelius Agrippas musings on the mystical properties of the number six, drawn primarily from Pythagorean sources, in Book 2, Chapter 9 of his Occult Philosophy.
[22] [23]

Plato, The Republic, op. cit., p. 342

From Porphyrys Life of Pythagoras, in Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library, Phanes Press, Michigan, USA, 1987, p. 129. Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, Trans. by J. A. K. Thomson, Penguin Classics revised edition, London, 2004, p. 24.
[24] [25]

Ibid. p. 205. This Platonic and Pythagorean concept of the good was developed by Eudorus in his concept of the telos, a supreme good to which the individual could aspire.

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[26]

Ibid. p. 11.

[27] From Baldesar Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, Penguin Classics Ed., Penguin Books, London, 2003, pp. 138-139. [28] [29] [30]

From Iamblichuss Life of Pythagoras, 33, cited in Guthrie, op. cit., p. 112. Ibid. p. 114. Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man, op. cit., pp. 21-22.

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