西概筆記Week 13

Today's mentions:

1.Orestes

In Greek mythology, Orestes was the son of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. He is the subject of several Ancient Greek plays and of various myths connected with his madness and purification, which retain obscure threads of much older ones.

2. Iphigenia

In Greek mythology, Iphigenia was a daughter of King Agamemnon and Queen Clytemnestra, and thus princess of Argos. After offending Artemis, Agamemnon was commanded to kill Iphigenia as a sacrifice to allow his ships to sail to Troy. In some versions, Iphigenia is sacrificed at Aulis, but in others, she is rescued by Artemis.In the version where she is saved, she goes to the Taurians and meets her brother Orestes.

3. The Sphinx

The sphinx  is a mythical creature with, as a minimum, the head of a human and the body of a lion.
In Greek tradition, it has the head of a human, the haunches of a lion, and sometimes the wings of a bird. It is mythicised as treacherous and merciless. Those who cannot answer its riddle suffer a fate typical in such mythological stories, as they are killed and eaten by this ravenous monster.This deadly version of a sphinx appears in the myth and drama of Oedipus. Unlike the Greek sphinx, which was a woman, the Egyptian sphinx is typically shown as a man (an androsphinx). In addition, the Egyptian sphinx was viewed as benevolent, but having a ferocious strength similar to the malevolent Greek version and both were thought of as guardians often flanking the entrances to temples.
In European decorative art, the sphinx enjoyed a major revival during the Renaissance. Later, the sphinx image, something very similar to the original Ancient Egyptian concept, was exported into many other cultures, albeit often interpreted quite differently due to translations of descriptions of the originals and the evolution of the concept in relation to other cultural traditions.
Sphinxes are generally associated with architectural structures such as royal tombs or religious temples. The oldest known sphinx was found near Gobekli Tepe at another site, Nevali Çori,or possibly 120 miles to the east at Kortik Tepe, Turkey, and was dated to 9,500 BCE.

4. dramatic tronie

The term 'tronie' is not clearly defined in art historical literature. Literary and

archival sources show that initially the term 'tronie' was not always associated

with people. Inventories sometimes referred to flower and fruit still lifes as 'tronies'.

More common was the meaning of face or visage. Often the term referred to the

entire head, even a bust, and in exceptional cases the whole body. A tronie could be

 two-dimensional, but also made of plaster or stone. Sometimes a tronie was a

likeness, the depiction of an individual, including the face of God, Christ, Mary, a

saint or an angel. In particular a tronie denoted the characteristic appearance of the

head of a type, for example a farmer, a beggar or a jester. Tronie sometimes meant

so much as a grotesque head or a model such as the type of an ugly old person.

When conceived as the face of an individual and of a type a tronie's aim was to

express feelings and character in an accurate manner and must therefore be

expressive.