Word: 16th
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Platonic thought. At one extreme is the purity of Plato's androgynous idea that love is a spiritual passion for the whole, and that the soul-which is on the lips when kissing-seeks union with the light of perfect truth. At the other extreme are the worldly 16th century Italian, French and Elizabethan poets who jocosely dealt in sexual double entendres that poked fun at speculation upon mystical union through the lips...
Eventually the idea of sexual restraint became an important element in that brocaded bag of tricks known as courtly love. But it took the cleverness of Baldassare Castiglione, a 16th century popularizer of Platonic love treatises, to humanize the conceit for sophisticated courtiers. In The Book of the Courtier (1528), Castiglione distinguished between sensual love and what he called rational love. Rational love, he said, puts greater emphasis on the senses of sight and hearing. He argued that as conduits for soul mergers, the eyes and ears are superior to the mouth, which responds to the inflammatory sense of touch...
...Taste is taste. But when the couple decided to sell the canvas to make a down payment on a car, they found quite a market. Bidding at Sotheby's stopped at $537,600 for The Temptation of Eve, authenticated as one of the few existing works of the 16th century German master Hans Baldung. "Obviously," said Cattrell after the sale, "we shall be able to afford the fare back to Edinburgh...
...using stratagems of such seeming innocence and such Machiavellian obliqueness that the victim scarcely knows he has been pinked. Thus one day, playing golf with a friend, Potter asked "a bit of a favor" on the third hole. But he delayed revealing what he wanted until the 16th. By this time his companion, anxiously speculating on how many pounds-ten? 100?-Potter was going to touch him for, was dubbing every other shot. As it developed, all Potter requested was the loan of a razor blade, a gambit that ruined the remainder of his friend's game. "Relief," added...
Mujica-Lainez conveys not only the well-known creative energies of the Renaissance but its less understood anxieties as well. Unmoored from the sureties of medieval order, the leisured man and the artist of the 16th century sought comfort in personal style. Every inch of space had to be embellished. Emptiness and simplicity were troubling reminders of a yawning eternity...