I read that line a couple weeks ago, used in regard to religious iconography, and it struck a chord with me. When people (including myself) "see it", they believe it, and not until. That's really what my quest for icons has been about, to "prove it" to myself and others, the links between plucked and bowed vihuela/viola. The pictures I had initially, a year ago, were shaky ground, not entirely convincing, to me, hard to see how one gets from point A to B. Little by little the gaps got filled in, the steps and branches were sharpened, the landscape and players came into focus, the picture became more clear. My faith increased, it grew, and it's darn-near unshakable now -- it's firm, I'm confident with it, I've taken it onboard, made it mine, I own it now. The pictures do tell the story, they are the organ, the instrument, of faith. They are important, indispensable, for recalling and transmitting culture, maintaining continuity, passing on our "real" estate, out heritage, from generation to generation.
This could serve to preface something about how museums and photographers hold our iconic heritage _hostage_, via copyrights and the like, but I won't go there ;') I really just wanted to add one more picture to the previous two posted, and find some excuse to use that line; "Iconography as the Organ of Faith". So without delay, here's a picture that should serve to lessen any doubts (or increase believability) that instruments like the one seen in the just-previous Arion image actually existed, that they were not mere fantasy, and that they were indeed bowed vihuela/viola. here's Arion again, Italian, c.1600 http://tinyurl.com/ar3l6 and here's another large "da braccio" bowed viola-vihuela by the Italian painter Marco Palmazano, early 16th century http://tinyurl.com/8pukg Of course, we can never prove anything with absolute 100% certainty, but the more we know, and the more we see, the fewer doubts we have. If one grows up seeing all these images, from day one, taking them for granted, no surprise, nothing new, it would all probably seem quite obvious and matter-of-fact (to them), the connections and one-ness among the family members. Much of this is new and "news" to us, so we're perhaps a little hesitant to tamper with our initial small set of religious icons and figures, the things we hold dear, our from-birth image-bank associations, the foundations of our belief system of "what God looks like", his incarnate form(s), his rod and staff, how he held them, and how he used them. We probably have some degree of fear of loosing something if we tamper with or increase our icon bank, our view of the Gods, but it seems much richer to me in the end, we gain much and loose nothing. So here's to repopulating the alter, a new collective retabel, our beloved one(s) Enthroned with all the music-making angels we can assemble in one place, for all time (and let's not loose them again ;'). Thanks Roger To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
