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Arquivo para July, 2019

Agnus dei´s Josefa, Óbidos, PT

24 Jul

This main work Josefa d’Ayala and Cabrera, or Josefa d´Óbidos (1630-1684), was a baroque painter in the city of Óbidos, her main work was Agnus Dei, whose painting is in the Évora museum.

The painting “Cordeiro Pascal Agnus Dei” was painted between 1660 and 1670 and is in the Museum of Évora, being one of his main works, but it is for the next post.

Its baroque style of still life is characteristic of the period called “Siglo d’Oro” of the arts. There was a new glimpse of nature by integrating floreros, scenes of hunting and representation of animals and still life in the painting.

Strong Iberian influence, among them of Francisco de Zurbarán, see Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose of the Iberian style of the “bodegóns” and “vases”, of the time.

The Christian influence is also in the work, which can be observed by the grapes, two branches of wheat below and details of the leaves of the vines, besides the Lamb himself.

 

 

Josefa, Óbidos, painting Portugal´s barroque

23 Jul

Josefa d’Ayala and Cabrera, a Josefa d’Óbidos (1630-1684), daughter of father, painter Baltazar Gomes Figueira. and Spanish mother D. Catarina de Ayala Camacho Cabrera Romero, noble Andalusian.

The father is in danger in Seville in 1626 to follow ephemeral military career. Josefa was the first daughter of her eight children, having been patronized by a famous Sevillian painter, Francisco de Herrera, el Velho. who is the master of Josefa’s father in Spain.

The return to Portugal of Baltazar and D. Catarina, in 1634 (until then made in 4 years), is not a case that the woman returned with her parents and a sister Luisa (born in 1632).

He will probably stay in Seville during his childhood with his father. Juan Ortiz de Ayala, collector and amateur of Fine Arts and his godfather Francisco de Herrera.

Josefa meets the family in Óbidos in 1647. It will be in Coimbra, that realizes its first work: the engraving “Santa Catarina”, signed by Jozepha d’Alla. Coimbra 1646.

It was important for Josefa to stay in Coimbra, in the Augustinian Convent of Santa Ana (1644-47), since it was a great source of information and instruction in the seventeenth century.

It will have been through the office of the father or the convent that Josefa de Óbidos will have had access to an engraving of Italo-Flemish origin, available free of charge in an office of any medium painter of the time, or in the library of any convent.

A short video of RTP shows the work of Josefa de Óbidos:

http://ensina.rtp.pt/artigo/josefa-de-obidos-1630-ou1634-1684/

 

 

Óbidos, the Portuguese medieval city

22 Jul

The city of Óbidos, considered one of the 7 wonders of Portugal, the little towns are villages, although they have municipal council, are linked to a district and this city is linked to the district of Leiria, in the province of Extremadura, the center has 2200 inhabitants , but the whole region has almost 12 thousand.

The city has a castle with walls, considered one of the 7 wonders of Portugal, where you can live with medieval aspects, this week for example, there is the medieval festival, but the project “Literary Village” turned Óbidos into Literary City by UNESCO.

It is 80 kilometers from Lisbon, has three cross streets, Rua Direita, Rua do Facho and Josefa d’Óbidos, a tribute to the main baroque artist of the city, post tomorrow. There are vestiges that Óbidos is inhabited from primitive peoples, its logistics near the sea, the climate and the fortification of defenses were in this region also the Romans, the Muslims and in the year 1148, after the conquest of Santarém and Lisbon by D. Afonso Henriques, was also taken from the Arabs.

There is near the Lagoa (lagoon) d’Óbidos, it is possible for the real road, being like lagoon easier of defense and also with exits to the sea in several points, going from the Beach of Bom Sucesso to the Praia da Foz do Arelho (Beach of the Foothills of the Sea Arelho), bypassing the Lagoon.

As for the name, the word comes from the Latin Oppidus, which means “fortified city”, there are signs that the emperor Cesar Augustus erected the city in the late 1st century BC. This week Óbidos holds the Medieval Festival, and there will be a doctoral meeting of Digital Art from the Open University.

The video below shows the Medieval Festival of last year:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeVOXpiKBC4

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

in Balsamão, away from the hustle and bustle

19 Jul

The movement to rest, to meditate and to dive deep in the Being, is a process of alienation of the political, social and economic crises. .
One can and should recover life from day to day, but with renewed energy, at the suggestion of a friend arriving in Portugal Marians of the Immaculate Conception.
It stands on top of Mount Morais, which is one of the five levels of the world, and the second is more important than Psalm 124, which says, “As Jerusalem surrounded thereby, protect your people / agora and forever.”
Climbing the terrace to the belvedere, with the Sierra de Bornes around, the olive groves of Chacim in the background, and the Abilheira thermal baths below, the tons of sunset are seen in this sunny period.
The story of the Polish book Casimir Wyszynski (1700-1755) described it as follows: “Here we are surrounded by rivers, fields, orchards, vineyards, meadows, olive trees and fruits of various kinds, and on this hill there are forests, trees, beautiful oaks.”
He is being formed by a monastery there, who already lived and called Brother Casimiro with his companion of grace Joao de Deus, who accepted and dressed to integrate a new order.
Does the desire to retreat and meditate to hear the deep voices in us, is also what Jesus means to care about his faith? Jesus and not to help the services of the house, seeing Jesus rebuke her (Luke 10,42): “Martha, Martha! You are worried and anxious for many things. But one thing is necessary. Mary chose a better place and this is not the one.”
It takes time to breathe, to rest and re-establish as energies.

 

Activism and the human condition

18 Jul

Part of the human “weariness” of our time is that we have decided to take to the extreme what the philosophers and mystics call “active life”, Hannah Arendt in “The Human Condition” addressed the subject, more recently Byung Chul-Han more recently in ” The society of fatigue “also addresses the issue.
It is placed next to the “contemplative life”, sometimes as opposed and at other times as complementary, the Mystic Saint Gregory Nazianus meditated and wrote on the subject, Chul-Han recovered some of these concepts.
In Arendt’s term “human condition” (2007), the term “active” refers to three essential human activities: labor, work, action, quoted in English because in portuguese no there is differentiation from the terms “labor” and “work” which corresponds to the artificialism of human existence, for example, when using machines, while Labor corresponds to the biological process of the human body as a condition for producing life.
But the action, it is for Arendt is the human condition of plurality, is mediated by things to put men in contact with each other, for this the author sees as a plurality that is tied to the fact that they are men, and not man to inhabit the Earth.
The author emphasizes that the world in which the active life takes place consists of things done by human activities; however, these things can exist only for the sake of men, and therefore they also condition them, men come into contact, and thereby make them It is immediately a condition of their existence, we live by what we do.
However the contemporary world has led people to stress, depression and now Burnout syndrome, the theme of the society of fatigue, Byung Chul-Han.
Chul-Han draws attention to the absence of contemplation, contemplative life, as part of the human need to have balance, energy and forces for action.
The biblical reading says, “Twenty to me all you who are weary” (Mt 11:28) and says the same passage “and learn from me, for I am meek and lowly in heart” (Mt 11:29).
ARENDT, Hannah. A Condição Humana. 10ª ed. Rio de Janeiro: Forense Universitária, 2007.

 

Anguish between inter-times

17 Jul

The passage from one historical time to another is tragic and is subject to many anguish, upheaval and that cause throughout society a great anguish: the new one does not exist yet and the old one takes to leave.

However, it is possible to read in the literature and in the various social theories how this passage, sometimes violent and sanguine like the French revolution and sometimes an explosion of culture and of knowledge like the renaissance.

Nicolau Sevcenko, who also analyzed the Renaissance period, analyzing the current moment as a roller coaster, and a stage that is in the roller coaster series, is described as: “it is the climax of precipitous acceleration under his intensity “relaxes our impulse to react, delivering the dull points” (SEVINCENO, 2001, p.16).

This author is nice to note that the crises of the previous deity, he said about the Italian renaissance: “The history of Renaissance culture clearly illustrates the whole process of cultural construction of modern man and contemporary society. In it, the germs of individualism, of rationalism and unlimited ambition, of the most imperative and representative behaviors of our time manifest themselves, already very dynamic and predominant. ” (SEVCENKO, Nicolau, The Renaissance, São Paulo: Current, 1987.)

That is, they are already a culture of our rhythm, parallel to renaissance, elements of a new culture, an approach to the planet as a whole, such as different ethnic and religious cultures, the end of individualism with collective responses. , but there are some old things.

The social anguish provoked by these changes, when they touch on certain people and with the immunity to the various types of social manifestation that arise from the provoked crises, can become a social disease, a political psychosis and an ataraxia to respond to the impulses provoked by groups of pressure.

The Greeks called ataraxia a state of “stillness of the soul,” the pre-Socratic philosopher Democritus (460-370 BC) who introduced this term in philosophy, was adopted by Epicureans and Stoics, but also has a sick state that would be indifference or apathy. It is necessary, above all, for calm and dialogue, which must also be done between tradition and the new cultures that emerge.

SEVCENKO, N. The race for the 21st century: on the roller coaster loop, São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2001.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Black holes and worldview

16 Jul

Until recently the material world comprised only the so-called baryonic matter which is 4% of the only one, which is the material that most people know, with the dark energy and mass appeared the “black holes” that are actually black bodies.
Scientists still believe from Einstein’s theory that black holes suck objects and everything around them, including light itself, now a new phenomenon can change that. This process of sucking is called accretion, so there is a hot plasma that orbits around the black hole and is sucked by accretion, but this can also occur in bodies, and now a body that resists this accretion has been sighted. of accretion body, by the junction of material around it in the process of protoplanet formation.
The GRS1915 + 105 object is actually two stars a black hole (the body whose gravity prevents anything from escaping, hence being called the hungry), and a very modest star for the proportion of the black hole, similar to the sun. If compared to the 13 billion light-years of the observable universe, it is close to the Earth, because it is 40 thousand light-years away, what intrigues is that the black star (the name looks better than a hole) is that the star -star is not sucked though called accretion.
Next to an American laboratory, the star was observed using an ESO (Southern European Observatory) telescope, forming a trio from Germany and Chile that captured the light from the companion star of the black hole and determined to ” technical “:
According to a paper published in Nature, astrophysicist Charles Bailyn of Yale University, USA, said that the calculations are still not very accurate in size, mass and energy: “It is computed using very simple observations and calculations based only on the laws of orbital motion of Kepler, who are already known and have been trusted for centuries. ”
The mass is one of the problem points, in addition to the aspect of the addition, according to Jochen Greiner of the Astrophysical Institute of Potsdam, Germany, one of the authors of the article: “I would be very surprised if the mass was so wrong that theories applied.
By that I mean that I am convinced that theories have missed the mark: “In fact it is already suspected that what we think about mass is something quite different, by the theory of the current relativity, until the particle of Highs and the existence of the black holes they seemed to confirm, since the universe copernican and newtonian were surpassed.
Now if the mass is the one that is measured, and the hole does not suck it, it means that there will be a new worldview, where mass and matter must be re-conceptued.

 

Human intelligence beyond artificial intelligence.

15 Jul

Until very recently it was believed that a certain type of intelligence was preponderating to others, the famous IQ test, for example, determined the intelligence of a person in numbers, which fell a bit into disrepute, then came the phase of emotional intelligence , it exists because we are in time of stress.
With the advances of artificial intelligence, the advances of artificial intelligence and the point of singularity, at which point machines will go beyond Intelligence in man, but what is this intelligence, is little questioned, the specialists give answers ready, but …
Due to conjunctural, social and cultural factors, a type of intelligence is developed that is logic, memory capacity and great talent to deal with mathematics and logic in general, one can find solution of complex problems, say the neuroscientists that she is strongly attached to the right side of the brain.
The second type is motor intelligence, artists and athletes develop great talents with a body expression and notion of space, distance and depth very sharp, can perform complex, graceful and sharp movements, as the name says is related to motor ability.
People with good written and oral ability have a type of intelligence called linguistics, in addition to the expression has a degree of attention and sensitivity to meet the views of others, is visible its usefulness in today’s world.
People with great ability to imagine and draw both in 2D and 3D have a great talent for graphic art, it is space intelligence, just as linguistic intelligence has great sensitivity and creativity, but its universe is itself and the interaction with others is done precisely by his spatial vision.
Musical intelligence is one that makes us see through the “sounds”, are people with a great facility to listen to music or sounds in general and identify different patterns and musical notes.
Two types uncommon are intra and interpersonal intelligences, and statistics are the rarest among people and yet the closest to our “being,” intrapersonal intelligence has an enormous facility to understand what people think, feel and desire, while the intra has a strong component of “leadership” because they are people capable of causing great admiration in others, and with special active intelligence mobilize and get to take action and put others to accompany it.
Of course this is as schematic as other classifications, but it is precisely by the scheme that artificial intelligence is thought to be related to this, in fact human intelligence is quite complex while the artificial one is very schematic, even though it is a complex scheme.
The TED by Daniel Levitin has already surpassed 14 million views, and has an interesting point of view of a neuroscientist:

 

Worldview: soul, feelings and wisdom

12 Jul

One can think of soul as mind, as consciousness (it is only a reflection), or identity, according to post about Giddens this leads to interiority in a restricted sense.
That is why we call it the Noosphere, the sphere of the mind or the outside, in a sense of vision, feelings and wisdom, being limited to a worldview, which is evolving.
It is not possible to have a broad worldview, without a broad soul, more than a soul-world, a universal soul in the sense not only anthropological, but cosmological.
Feelings have a great appeal in the contemporary world, as functional logics have become much of the engaging of thought, it is possible and easy to manipulate opinions and people through these resources, but they are dangerous without soul and wisdom.
Wisdom is the most critical element of the noosphere, there are those who believe that through feeling and soul can walk quietly, there are therapies and even online courses to produce happiness, well-being and other promises without any wisdom, the result in short term is commendable, but in the long run it will prove ineffective will lack such sustainability.
Wisdom is also critical because many currents of thought and diverse forms of culture can lead to reductionism, and this will bring in the contemporary world a lack of seeing the Other, sometimes there is even intention, but the result is the result of the restricted world .
The teachers of the Law were in the time of Jesus, the Pharisees who knew the scripture, but whose practice was distorted, one of them addresses Jesus to ask how to have the eternal inheritance.
The great spiritual argument of Loving God is a resource of a certain kind of ignorance, but a good Bible reading is enough to realize that it is false, is in Luke 10: 26-27, and Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read? “He replied,” You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your intelligence; and your neighbor as yourself! ”
Jesus immediately binds the heart “feelings” to the soul, because it knows and respects the interiority, from where the soul drinks, and ends by asking for love of neighbor, the Other.

 

World and the Post 2015´s Agend

11 Jul

When the UN organized its Post 2015 Development Agenda, it appeared that civil society organizations were moving towards a greater focus on poverty and hunger, urban planning and education, nuclear disarmament and women’s empowerment, others subjects related to the person, the struggle for greater perks and powers, the return of nationalism moved in the opposite direction.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in September 2014 “Our world needs more wind and solar energy. But I believe in an even stronger source of energy, people’s power”, the path seemed safe and was not, one can now evaluate the error.
The numbers that preceded the conservative turnaround were still “very unequal” in Latin America, Eduardo Frei affirmed that the Chile that governed from 1994-2000, with several initiatives that promoted democracy and social justice, had reduced poverty by 38.6% to 7.8% of the population, and extreme poverty from 13% to 2.5%, but by 2015 Latin America had another profile, despite GDP growth from 2015 to 2018 (photo above).
It was still a region “more unequal” than another, of its 600 million inhabitants still 167 million lived in poverty and 71 million in extreme poverty, this contrast reveals a dangerous and deep social gap, according to the own Frei in 2015.
Regarding the future, Frei affirms that the struggle against poverty and inequalities demanded another effort on an ethical basis, and at this crossroads, it would be time for governments to give greater impetus to the “moral movement” that did not happen.
Juan Somavia, former Director of the International Labor Organization, said in the post 2015 agenda that a good basis for negotiations would be: “the document reflects an extremely ambitious vision with its 17 goals and 69 indicators centered on the concept of sustainable development focused on people and eradicating poverty, “saying that UN political support was critical.
In 20th birthday of UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which was adopted in 2000, said that the problem of poverty eradication was echoed by the UN’s Economic and Social Council (Ecosoc) : productive employment and social integration have been excluded, and it is not mere coincidence. And social integration is a broader concept when we think of global citizenship.