Faldoni, parts 2552 - 2555

 2552. So when Faldoni said to himself that the sun came up on his right hand side, this is an especially apt example of his philosophy. He did not think of it as a philosophy however, because simple people do not have philosophies, they are just stating the obvious truth as they comprehend it in their naivety. 

 2553. Similarly, he did not realize that it was not possible to do any paintings which the other students would not find fault with. The tendency to imagine that things you yourself find beautiful will be found beautiful by everyone else is another characteristic of Faldonian thinking applied to a conception of aesthetics. 

 2554. For a Faldonian, things which are beautiful appear beautiful to everybody, and things that are ugly, are obviously going to be ugly to everyone. This goes without saying; at least to them.

2555. Faldonians can’t help but notice that there are exceptions to these rules and anyone can find individuals who will insist that beauty is relative, and will proceed to find fault with, for example, roses in bloom, sunsets, smiling babies, and kittens.

Faldoni, parts 2548 - 2551

 2548. But if you turn around and face the South, then the sun will be coming up on your left, and will be setting on your right hand side. I know this is obvious to you, but I just put it into this examination of Faldoni work, because I want you to notice that he had an Aristotelian conception of the universe, and not a Copernican notion the universe.

 2549. An Aristotelian conception of the universe assumes that the earth is the center of the universe, and it is a conception characteristic of the middle-ages and the early Renaissance. But a Copernican conception of the universe is indicative of a late Renaissance or Baroque point of view, in which the earth rotates around the sun, so the earth is no longer the center of the universe.

 2550. Today you can find an enormous number of people who claim that they know that the earth rotates around the sun, but they are lying to you, because they do not really believe it. In the morning they say, “The sun is coming up,” and in the evening they say, “the sun is going down,” and this reveals what they really think about the earth and the sun, and the interaction of the two.

2551. So, coming back to Faldoni, we could truly say that he had neither an Aristotelian or a Copernican conception of the universe, what he had was a Faldonian conception. Faldonian conceptions assume that Faldoni is the center of the universe, and everything is revolving around him, or his cell, he was not sure which.

Faldoni, parts 2544 - 2547

 2544. The business of the sunlight lighting up his fingers was not so obvious as the effect of the light on his orange, but still it was pretty easy for him to see that the effect was the same: being that the part of his fingers which faced the light was a lighter tint of finger color than the parts that did not face the light.

 2545. Although Faldoni liked the imaginary praise of his imaginary visitors to his cell, he was most disturbed by his imaginary critics. And although he was doing all of his paintings only for himself, and was certain they would never be seen by anyone, the disruption of vanity, which everyone suffers from, began to gnaw at him, and he considered how to change his work so that if ever it should be seen, the apprentices would admire it.

 2546. With this in mind he began to do all of his portrait heads with his new discovery, having every face look like it was lit up by a light coming from the right hand side. Once he had mastered light coming from the right, he began to practice painting faces lit from the left. He called these various heads “Morning heads,” and “Evening Heads,” because the light comes from the right in the morning, and comes from the left in the evening.

2547. It is not really true that light comes from the right in the morning and from the left in the afternoon. This is only true if you consider the source of light from one point of view. For example, if you are looking to the North, the sun does come up on your right hand side, and it does set on your left hand side.

Faldoni, parts 2540 - 2543

 2540. In the morning when he woke up the first thing he did was to have a look at his painting. He was not yet completely awake and so his mind was not shackled by any notions from the day before. If he had been fully awake he would have expected to see his painting disaster, but instead, for several seconds he could not comprehend what he was looking at. 

 2541. His painted face seemed to be completely round, and lit up by the light coming from the window. It looked this way to him for only a split second. Then it turned into the mess from the night before.

 2542. And so, completely by a series of accidents, Faldoni discovered that lighter tints of his skin color could be used to make a face look like it was illuminated by a light source coming from the side, and therefore round instead of flat. This was such an exciting discovery that it occupied his mind for the entire day. Suddenly everything looked different to him.

2543. At breakfast he was given an orange along with his porridge. He held the orange up to the light from a window and considered how the light changed the color of the orange over on the side facing the window. Not only that, but the light from the window did the same interesting kind of thing to his fingers also. Then there was his white porridge bowl to consider.

Faldoni, parts 2536 - 2539

 2536. He would have been quite happy to simply use Venetian Red and some white like the Egyptians always did but one day he tipped over his jar of Earth Green and some of the pigment got into his flesh color and made it look better. Why a little bit of green helped his color so much he did not know, but it became an important part of his formula.

 2537. One evening he was especially tired as it was late. He was in the middle of painting a very difficult three-quarter portrait which he had named, “Father Franklin.” He did not start out to paint a portrait of Father Franklin, but he named him that because the painting was giving him such a hard time, just as Father Franklin always did. 

 2538. He had painted almost all of the face, going from left to right, (Faldoni was left handed by the way.) Just before he finished the right hand side of the face he ran out of his flesh tone and hurriedly mixed up a new batch, but he was so careless and inattentive that he mixed up two parts of white to one part of Venetian Red.

 

2539. He was almost done with the outside edge of the face using his new color when he noticed his mistake. This is how tired and careless Faldoni was: he was putting color on his painting and all the while hardly looking at it, since he was practically falling asleep. Suddenly he saw what he was doing and jumped up from his chair in disgust. There was only one thing to do, scrape it all out and start over again, but instead he left it as it was and went to sleep instead.

Faldoni, parts 2532 - 2535

 2532. Returning to his cell the day after his exposure to this conversation about the dark ages, he was distressed to notice that all the faces he had painted were indeed outlined in black, and not only that, all the skin tones were exactly the same kind of peachy red color.

 2533. I just must belong in the dark ages then, and I am completely out of place here in the early Renaissance, he said to himself, rapping his head with his knuckles as usual.

 2534. Regardless of the imaginary criticism Faldoni suffered from while doing his paintings, still he labored at his project, and continued to paint his faces all one color with black lines around all the shapes and separating all of the forms, and it was quite by accident one day that he discovered that, indeed, light is a “thing” and you can paint it just like you can paint orange peel, or a banana.

2535. Face color is a prodigiously difficult color for an artist to mix up. Why it is so hard we will have to talk about later, but for now we will just say that Faldoni had a simple formula for his face color which consisted of two parts Venetian Red, one part of white, and a very little bit of green earth added in for good measure.

Faldoni, parts 2528 - 2531

2528. That was not all, however. He also overheard their conversations about the paintings done in the “Dark Ages,” before the advent of the Renaissance, of which they were quite proud to be a part. Present day scholars like to say that the label, “The Dark Ages,” is a modern term, and that the ancients did not think of their time as particularly dark, but they are wrong.

2529. The artists of the early Renaissance thought of the earlier artists as having lived in the dark ages, because their paintings never depict any sources of light, unless you count halos, and an abundance of gilding as a source of light. 

2530. They also referred to the Medieval paintings as having been done in the “Dark Ages,” because of the preponderance of the art of stained glass, in which, undoubtedly, there is the effect of the sunlight shining through the glass, but the figures themselves are always outlined with black lines of lead, and all the faces, arms and legs are invariably depicted in single shades of one color. 

2531. Listening to these comments about the flatness of the paintings done in the dark ages, and the black outlines of the stained glass, Faldoni wondered to himself if his painting possessed any element of the depiction of sunlight, although he was not exactly sure how sunlight, which is not an object like a coat or a chair, could ever be represented.