ROOZRANG

roozrang is the best Iranian website about graphic & design. In this week Rozrang presents my 23 posters and also there is a long interview with me that was made by Mr. Meghdad Shirali graphic designer and curator. The interview was written in Persian language. Click here to read.

GOOD FRIDAY WITH JOHANNES HOLBEIN

My book The Ambassador and the Pharaoah is about Hans Holbein’s Double Portrait, TheAmbassadors that is one of the most enigmatic painting of the Renaissance, and about an other painting signed by Holbein too: Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh although art historians agree that it is not a real Holbein-painting.

The precise date is known in the case of The Ambassadors since there are several devices measuring time on the upper shelf of the chiffonier. It is April the 11th, 1533. The specialty of this day is that it was Good Friday, 1500 years after the crucifixion of the 33 years old Jesus. This feature makes the painting analogous to the two most complex literary works of the Middle Ages: Dante’s La Divina Commedia, whose plot begins on Good Friday in 1300, and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, in which the last day of the plot is also the same in 1400.

I enclose a poem from the book in Hungarian and in English - translated by Péter Balikó Lengyel. Thanks Peter!

Pokolra juss, vagy juss mennybe,

akár csak egy követ menj be:

szóvivő,

mint akinek nincs is dolga

más, mint szépen meghajolva,

s ahogy ő,

úgy járni el ura helyett,

s már feledni is a helyet

íziben.

Légy világfi, vagy légy tudós,

ne firtasd, hogy mit rejt a sors,

s mit üzen.

S egyszer majd, merengve éppen,

szemed egy különös képen

ráhibáz

valami sohase látott

furcsa tárgyra, ami bár ott

van, de még sincs: mint egy fátum

úgy jelen meg. Vanitatum

vanitas.

*

Whether into hell or heaven,

as ambassador

now enter —

like a hasty harbinger,

whose only mission is to bow,

forgetting all the massacre.

And, as he, just act in stead

of him who sent you as your master,

then retrace your steps — the faster

the better.

Be thou of the world or faith,

never scrutinize thy fate,

or the message it may harbor.

One day, as you muse before

a painting so peculiar

that it makes you merrier,

your gaze will fix a sight unseen —

an object that has never been,

yet is there inevitably

as your death or destiny:

a vanitas, or vanity.           

THE LABYRINTH OF THE POET

Near Padova, only some 30 kilometres from Venice, facing the Brenta River, this is Villa Pisani and in the garden this is the famous maze. The villa belonged to the rich Pisani family, who had it built by the architect, librettist, and poet Girolamo Fringimelica in 1722. He designed the labyrinth too including a central tower with its double helical external staircase to confuse visitors even more.