Notes:
I. Japan
1) Like the Jesus Prayer in the Christian Orthodox tradition, Pure Land Buddhists believe that through the repeated chanting of the nembutsu, one can achieve salvation.
++Interesting and moving documentary film about the Jesus prayer++
2) Great online article about Pure Land Buddhism and art.
3) DT Suzuki in his book, Buddha of Infinite Light, has an excellent explanation of jiriki (自力, one's own strength) versus tariki (他力 meaning "other power", "outside help") are two terms in Japanese Buddhist schools that classify how one becomes spiritually enlightened. Jiriki is commonly practiced in Zen Buddhism. In Pure Land Buddhism, tariki often refers to the power of Amitābha Buddha.
4) Other Books: Genshin's Ōjōyōshū and the Construction of Pure Land Discourse in Heian Japan, by Robert F. Rhodes & Pure Land Buddhist Painting, by Joji Okazaki
II Spain
5) It should be noted that Philip II was deeply influenced in his morbid pursuits by his father Charles V (Holy Roman emperor and king of Spain), who was one of the few emperors in history to actual give up power at only 54. It is a bit of a mystery what happened to make this warrior king (who people called caesar) suddenly abdicate and retreat into a remote monastery in the mountains; where he spent three years actively "preparing to die."
This included planning his own funeral, in which he practiced presiding over the rites, so as not to miss out.
He also commissioned an extraordinary painting from Titian, who was by then quite old. Now hanging in the Prado, it is my favorite work by Titian. It is absolutely massive. Staring up at it in the main hall, who couldn't be moved by its heavenly colors and the image of Charles V devoid of any royal trappings and wrapped in nothing but a white sheet, arms outstretched in humble supplication toward heaven. Oh, wait, I take that back. I guess what with the doors of heavens being thrown open for him and the Trinity in all its Glory, there to greet him, maybe it wasn't so humble after all.
But looking at it, I couldn't help but again remember the raigo-zu paintings in Japan.
The portal was open to heaven and the Holy Trinity was there awaiting his arrival. We know that Charles V commissioned the painting in great detail and repeatedly asked his ambassadors in Rome to check on its progress. It was finally delivered and it was this painting that was installed in the room where he lie dying. La Gloria. If its possible, his son Philip II outdid him, ostensibly building el Escorial for his father. Philip II had a This great monument to the counter-Reformation was his baby. He had a hand in much of the planning and would design a small cell-like room just above the place where he would be interred after death, in the necropolis below. As you can see in the photo at left, the small room is mainly taken up by a four poster bed. Through the opening to the left, he had a direct view of the basilica altar so that he could still see the mass celebrated in his final weeks without getting out of bed. And what did he want to gaze upon as he lie dying?
6) Recommended reading about el Escorial: Henry Kamen's: The Escorial: Art and Power in the Renaissance
7) Fuentes never-ending novel, Terra Nostra.
8) About Charles V: Norwich's Four Princes: Henry VIII, Francis I, Charles V, Suleiman the Magnificent and the Obsessions that Forged Modern Europe
III Bosch
9) Books I loved:
Hieronymus Bosch: Visions and Nightmares
by Nils Büttner
Cees Nooteboom's A Dark Premonition: Journeys to Hieronymus Bosch
This is a book I wish I could have written ~~ To see a masterpiece at 21 and then go back and see it again at 82. How has the painting changed? How has the viewer changed? Is it even the same man? Can we moderns access the picture in the way Philip II did? Have our eyes changed so much?
Hieronymus Bosch: Garden of Earthly Delights
by Hans Belting
This old documentary is my favorite--both because I agree with his common-sense view of the picture and also because it opens with the triptych closed so you can feel something of the drama that the court must have felt when it was opened.
MUST-SEE Bosch Garden of Dreams film (2019)
10) Have you heard of the German physiologist of enzyme fame, Wilhelm Kühne and his perhaps unfortunate pursuit of science of optography? Made famous by no less than Jules Verne and Robocop, this is the "science " of images becoming physically imprinted upon our retina at the moment of death. Not only are the implications for mystery books and detective crime solving enormous, but it also speaks to the practice of looking at pictures while dying. Not really, but, I still like this topic. So, what picture would you want imprinted on your eyes as you lie dying?
11) Don't miss:The Angel of the Left Bank: The Secrets of Delacroix's Parisian Masterpiece
by Jean-Paul Kauffmann
IV Being Mortal
12) I wrote this a few years ago: Dancing with the Dalai Lama
13) Don't miss Atul Gawande's Being Mortal
14) More than anything, I recommend In the Slender Margin
V Las Meninas
Books:
Laura Cummings: Vanishing Velasquez (I have read it four times!!)
Everything is Happening: Journey into a Painting, by Michael Jacobs
Jonathan Brown: In the Shadow of Velasquez
Another moving book about a picture: The Angel on the Left Bank: The Secrets of Delacroix’s Parisian Masterpiece
++
Below: Provoking the spectator. “Las Meninas” by Joel Peter Witkin
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