[meteorite-list] What's going on in the background?

[MexicoDoug]

"What's going on in the background?"

Hola Martin, Comes meteoritae;

It would seem Sigismondo d' Conti (1432 -1512) commissioned this 1511 
painting to commemorate how he narrowly escaped death by a fragmenting 
cannonball during the 1439 seige of Foligno, by the Status Pontificius 
who were retook his city after Corrado IV Trinci withdrew it from the 
Pope's tributary possessions.

Conti attributed his survival to his guardian angel.  He would have 
been about 7 years old during the seige, and was probably in a process 
of atonement and praise God, since he would die with a year after the 
painting was finished.  Foligno is in the background under a rainbow, 
or halo, probably to show the presence of the angel (the left arch in 
your partial image of the painting).  The projectile is represented on 
the right.

Alternately, in Abraham Kaplan's word's

"I call it the law of the instrument, and it may be formulated as 
follows: Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he 
encounters needs pounding.  It comes as no particular surprise to 
discover that a scientist formulates problems in a way which requires 
for their solution just those techniques in which he himself is 
especially skilled."

Of course Mr. Kaplan didn't imagine what we would imagine a hammer 
could be ;-)

Kindest wishes
Doug


-----Original Message-----
From: Martin Altmann <altmann at meteorite-martin.de>
To: meteorite-list <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Mon, Jan 9, 2012 9:36 am
Subject: [meteorite-list] What's going on in the background?


Oops!

http://www.wga.hu/art/r/raphael/5roma/1/07folig1.jpg


☺
Martin

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