draft
Rarely
does a phrase result in so much evocative imagery as the term Anima Sola. Well known to those of a Roman Catholic bent, the Anima Sola refers to the lonely soul who suffers in Purgatory as the
sins of mortal existence are expunged so that they can ascend to
heaven. Those of us who did not grow up in a Roman Catholic home or
neighborhood are perhaps not so aware of the significance of the term
and its associated imagery even though we have probably seen some of
the images without knowing what we were looking at.
In
reviewing the Anima Sola and related concepts as part of research in
belief systems about hell and punishment for sin, a topic of great
personal interest to me, I came across a number of wonderful
variations on this theme, and wanted to decorate my blog with them.
As
always with images taken from the Internet, provenance and
ownership are fluid. I have listed below what I believe are the
sources for the images exhibited here. And there are many more
fabulous interpretations of this concept available at those links.
A reader of this blog, esteemed pioneer of computer animation, Julian Gomez, has asked why these portraits all seem to represent women. I have wondered this myself, and I will have to do more research. You can see our dialogue in the comments section.
I suspect that a more thorough understanding of the ideas behind the images will be necessary to really understand what is going on here.
A reader of this blog, esteemed pioneer of computer animation, Julian Gomez, has asked why these portraits all seem to represent women. I have wondered this myself, and I will have to do more research. You can see our dialogue in the comments section.
I suspect that a more thorough understanding of the ideas behind the images will be necessary to really understand what is going on here.
This is one of my favorites. Notice the hacksaw to cut through the chains. No passive suffering here!
