ART, ITS RELATION TO THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

As anyone who stops to analyze art in its most significant expression, I find art is man's attempt to deal with violence. True artists have always committed themselves to the everyday afflictions of their neighbours, that is the afflictions of mankind. Violence has always been mankind's worst enemy, and that is conspicuously expressed in the great masterpieces of the great painters of the Renaissance and beyond; e.g.,

1. Hieronymus Bosch (actually a pre-renascent painter), "The Garden of Delights"

2. Pieter Bruegel, "The Triumph of Death", which symbolizes that the only winner in wars is death.

3. Jacopo Robusti (Il Tintoretto), "The fall of San Rocco's angel". Notice that the angel falls from heaven to succor a slave! Notice also, the sense of reality that emerges from the picture. All in perfect consonance with the trend to rebuff scholasticism and embrace empiricism.

4. Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, "The Colossus". Which symbolizes uncontrolled violence (war), and the people's sense of helplessness.