Esoteric Rome E-Book

Francesco Roesler Franz

• Herausgeber: Youcanprint
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Forte di questa sua simbologia insita, l'arte si rivela ancora una volta il luogo deputato del pensiero mitico sia quanto luogo di esibizione del simbolo, come nelle arti figurative, sia come luogo nel quale il pensiero poetante disegna la duplicità del reale nel dipanarsi della narrazione. Tre serie di quaranta acquerelli, per un totale di centoventi quadri. È questa Roma Sparita, un'opera complessa e mozzafiato che tocca le corde più alte dell'arte. A firmarla è stato Ettore Roesler Franz, ma quali erano davvero le sue intenzioni? Questi quadri non sono solo la testimonianza di un grande talento artistico ma un vero e proprio mistero perché dietro di essi c'è un mondo intero da scoprire. Celebrazione della Roma massonica, testimonianza dei cambiamenti urbanistici della città, esaltazione della spiritualità, elogi ai grandi artisti: tanti sono i significati esoterici che si intrecciano tra questi quadri e che vengono esaminati e approfonditi in questo incredibile saggio, scritto dal pronipote del grande artista.

Leseprobe

Index

Preface

Esoteric preface

Introduction

Paintings that do not belong to the ‘Roma Sparita’

The sacred wood of the nymph Egeria

The Via Appia Antica

Dawn after the Night of St. John

Basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem

Glastonbury Abbey

New Forest

Edinburgh Castle

Vanished Rome

Barberini Square

Pictures dealing with the Risorgimento

Tower of the Militia

The Clementine Fountain at the port of Ripetta

Arc of the Ptolemies

One of the inner courtyards of Cardinal Nardini’s palace

Paintings against the temporal power of the Papal State

The first coming of King Vittorio Emanuele II in Rome on 30 December 1870

The Tiber

Broken Bridge

The twelve paintings of the Ghetto

Porta Angelica, Borgo Angelico and Porta Cavalleggeri

La Porta Angelica

Tor di Nona on the Tiber

One of the arches of the corridor of Alexander VI

Via del Campanile del Borgo; in the distance you can see the Vatican corridor

Tower of Paul III on the Campidoglio hill

Steps of San Francesco di Paola and the house of Cesarini, called della Vannozza

‘Entrance to the Savelli Castle on the Aventine’

Montanara Square

The Paola water fountain near the Sisto Bridge

Church and Bell Tower of Santa Maria in Monticelli

Watercolours related to the cult of Mithras

Barberini Square

In the alley of San Nicola da Tolentino

Entrance to the basilica of Santo Stefano Rotondo on the Caelian

Exaltation of Spirituality

Church of the Santi Quattro Coronati

Old houses in Vicolo della Volpe

Saint Sabina on the Aventine; on the bottom, on the right side, the Bell Tower of Sant’Alessio

Prati di Castello, meeting at San Salvatore in Lauro

Medieval houses on the square of Santa Cecilia

Sacred Love and Profane Love

Anguillara Tower

Via dei Cappellari

The Pierleoni family

San Giovanni dei Fiorentini

Pergola of the terrace of the hospice of San Luigi al ponte Senatorio

San Lorenzo Gate

Tomb of Caius Sulpicius Platorinus

Loggia of Cardinal Bessarion’s house on the via Latina

Via dei Penitenzieri

Entrance to the church of San Saba at the foot of the Aventine Hill

Paintings linked to the alchemical tradition

Villa Ludovisi

The garden and the hospital of Santo Spirito in Sassia

The Bear Tavern

Pictures related to the Masonic tradition

Pyramid of Caius Cestius

Two obelisks

Instruments linked to Masonic symbolism

Posterula near Monte Brianzo

Old mediaeval houses at the Lungara, near the Farnesina

Group of old medieval houses at the Lungaretta corner of via della Luce

Santa Maria dell’Orazione e della Morte

Frangipane tower, known as the ‘Monkey Tower’

House of Cola di Rienzo

At the meadows of Castello where the palace of justice will rise

Palace of Bindo Altoviti near the Sant’Angelo bridge

The house of Giulio Romano

Temple of Hercules and Santa Maria Egiziaca

Temple of Hercules and Cloaca Massima

The entrance to the House of the Castellans in via della Longarina in Trastevere.

At the Meadows of Testaccio

Triptych

First triptych

Second Triptych

At the Meadows of Castello, San Carlo at the Bottom

View of the Tiber at La Marmorata

Boats moored on the Tiber in Rome in the Porto di Ripa Grande in front of the Salara

Third Triptych

Via della Salara alla Marmorata with Via di Porta Leone and the Bell Tower of S.M. in Cosmadin

The Via della Greca near the Piazza della Bocca della Verità and the Bell Tower of S.M. in Cosmadin

Final considerations on Roma Sparita

Francesco Roesler Franz

Esoteric Rome

What secrets are hidden in the 120 watercolours of Ettore Roesler Franz’s paintings of ‘Vanished Rome’?

Esoteric Rome

Author | Francesco Roesler Franz

ISBN | 9791220395557

Cover: Campanile in Borgo; watercolour by Ettore Roesler Franz

Website: www.ettoreroeslerfranz.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EttoreRoeslerFranz/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ettore.roeslerfranz_art/

© 2022 All rights reserved by the Author

No part of this book may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Author.

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to Ettore Roesler Franz,

to Ettore Ferrari,

to Ernesto Nathan,

Preface

So the reason why my great-uncle Ettore has included all these paintings in the Roma Sparita series is not because of a romantic or nostalgic attachment to the river Tiber, but as an indictment of the temporal power of the Papal State for the carelessness with which it ran Rome.

Bringing order to the tangled skein of the world is an ambitious, incredible, perhaps almost naive project. If most people get lost in this attempt, the great artists succeed in a surprising way, leaving behind a mark destined to last forever.

Ettore Roesler Franz certainly succeeded, because in addition to being an artist, he was a complex, extraordinary and deeply human man, as his works show.

His work describes a journey that we should all take and which, picture after picture, forms our collective unconscious. It wakes us up from the torpor of life, shakes us out of that sleep of tedium that sometimes envelops our daily lives and invigorates us, awakens our attention and brightens our days as only a dear friend can.

And if we add to all this the desire of a great-grandson who wishes to pay homage to the talent of an extraordinary great-uncle, everything changes, because a special and indestructible bond is built within us with these two men.

On one side the artist, on the other the writer. In a dualism that seems almost dangerous, that makes us fear we might stumble at some point, because we have absolutely no idea where it will lead us. And yet, if we trust it, after reading Francesco Roesler Franz’s essay, we cannot help but rediscover ourselves as different people. We learn to live art, not just look at it. We learn the importance of that special human bond that goes beyond the ties of blood and reminds us all of our humanity.

The grandeur of Ettore Roesler Franz shines from every page of Esoteric Rome and it is through clear and sincere eyes that we understand all the fascination of initiatory esotericism and we embark with passion and curiosity on an esoteric journey into the purest art.

‘Basically, my great-uncle Ettore was unique among nineteenth-century Roman painters, because he not only knew the secrets of the initiates but also had a network of friendships with the greatest European artistic and cultural exponents, and this is confirmed both by his long stays abroad and by the astonishing number of exhibitions he held throughout Europe,’ writes Francesco Roesler Franz. And in his words there is no exaggeration, there is no sweetening that this family bond might impose. With Ettore Roesler Franz we discover the importance of symbolism and we are about to be reborn to new life, thanks to the messages hidden in his works.

And if the artist is so great, the writer, his biological successor, is no less so and gives us, with his words, an equally important and profound testimony.

As well as being a striking example of an exhaustive critical analysis of a man and a subject that are by no means easy, Esoteric Rome is also a propaedeutic project, leading us to an intimate personal confession and to the understanding that without art our world would be much less special.

Seeing Ettore Roesler Franz’s works together, and reading his analysis of them, is an unexpected exercise for both heart and mind, an adventure that we can experience at home and that changes us completely.

Once we have finished reading , we will no longer be able to look at a painting with the same eyes: all our senses will be alert and our attention will be stimulated as never before. We will understand that each work opens the door to complex narratives and that the eyes of an artist are endowed with a poetry that we should never underestimate.

Esoteric preface

by Luca Rocconi

Writing a preface is an arduous task, tantamount to a declaration of the intentions of the text that follows it, presenting readers with the origins of literary creation, the methods and goals set by the author, all in a few clear, light and unambiguous lines. This preface (from the Latin praefatio ‘to preface, to say before’) is not written by the author but is written by a third person, who has been asked for an esoteric preface, given the nature and content of the pages that follow. Out of my love for esotericism, therefore, I will briefly explain the meaning of this term: it derives from the Greek language, from ἐσώτερος (esóteros, inner), and represents the ability to go beyond outward appearances, to access the core of inner truth. The main task of the esotericist is to ask the why of things and not to stop at the who, how, when and where. The spiritual disciplines, Kabbalah, alchemy, hermeticism, magic and astrolog y, are esoteric, and these disciplines are examined in the book by my good friend Francesco Roesler Franz. Writing an esoteric preface is indeed a difficult task, but to be able to present the characteristics of this work to the readers through this brief ‘inner premise’ is also a great honour.

In reading this book, one learns that the series of 120 images of Roma Sparita painted by Ettore Roesler Franz, owned by the City of Rome, conceals a profound esoteric meaning , where the many threads hidden in these splendid paintings intertwine, forming the fabric of this essay, the plots of which I do not pretend to summarise in this foreword, and even less do I wish to deprive the reader of the pleasure of reading , a pleasure that will be expressed to the fullest when one comes to the conclusions.

Luca Rocconi di Roma Esoterica

Introduction

The link between art and the dimension that we arbitrarily define as esoteric has a very ancient origin, to the point that, for many scholars, it can already be found in the numerous cave paintings of prehistoric times. This link has never lost its consistency, giving rise to many theses, finding their greatest affirmation during the Renaissance. In Giorgione’s or Bosch’s paintings, as in many other works by artists of all times, scholars have grasped a whole series of singular esoteric references.

The iconographical investigation carried out by Erwin Panofsky (who took up the theses of Cesare Ripa, author of An Iconolog y (1593), which indicated the way to consider art as ‘reasoning through images’), has focused on the esoteric, magical value of art. Indeed, as a method of historical interpretation, capable of going beyond the purely descriptive and classificatory aspects of analysis, iconography is the most suitable tool for looking beyond appearance, beyond the representation itself.

This type of reading is affirmed on two grounds: firstly, the atavistic connection between the artist and the universe of mystery and the supernatural, and secondly, the use of esoteric culture in the approach to the pictorial tradition.

The role of the esoteric artist depends above all on the environment in which he lives and which, in fact, in many respects, recognises his extraordinary qualities in his behaviour and his place in society.

On the strength of its inherent symbolism, art once again proves to be the able proxy of mythical thought, both as a locus for the exhibition of the symbol, as in the figurative arts, and as a place where poetical thought draws out the duplicity of reality in the unfolding of the narrative.

For psychoanalysis, artistic activity is a sign of inner unease (just like recourse to magic and magical thinking , according to rationalist criticism). This is how Sigmund Freud defined, in his essay The Poet and the Imagination, the motivations for the creative quest: dissatisfaction directed towards seeking in an ‘other’ space a possible place, in which appearances and inalienable certainties can be questioned and, if necessary, reconstructed.

‘We can assume that happy people never fantasise, only the dissatisfied do. The driving forces of fantasies are unsatisfied desires, and every single fantasy is a wish-fulfilment, a correction of unsatisfactory reality.’

Probably, as Proust argued, ‘without a nervous illness one is not a great artist.’ And it is perhaps because of this status that ‘by art alone we are able to get outside ourselves, to know what another sees of this universe, which for him is not ours, the landscapes of which would remain as unknown to us as those of the moon’ (from Il tempo ritrovato).

The question was further focused on by C. G. Jung in his essay Psycholog y and Poetry, in 1930, in which he made it clear that ‘Within the work of art, vision represents an experience deeper and stronger than human passion... In feeling we experience what is known, but intuition leads us towards the unknown and the hidden, towards things which are occult by nature; which, even if they have been known, have been intentionally disguised and made mysterious, and therefore from the earliest times have been considered enigmatic, disturbing and deceptive’.

Jung later came to an important conclusion, which is still relevant today, even from the point of view of assessing the complex relationship between art and magic.

‘The mystery of creativity, like that of free will, is a transcendental problem that psycholog y cannot solve, but only describe. The creative personality is also an enigma whose solution will be sought in many ways, but always in vain.’ Just like magic.

In fact, from Freud’s psychoanalytical perspective, ‘art, which certainly did not begin as art for art’s sake, is originally at the service of tendencies that have largely disappeared today. It is fair to say that many of these are magical intentions.’ And like magic, Georges Braque stated, ‘art is made to disturb, science to reassure.’

The esoteric nature of art is expressed through the language of symbols, making use of signs organised according to a pattern that is never chaotic, but is perceivable on levels that can be penetrated depending on the tools possessed by the observer.

Important artists, most of whom can be traced back to those who adhered to the Rosicrucians, have produced paintings rich in esoteric meanings, which can be read not only for what they show clearly and obviously to the layman, but also for the hidden messages they contain. In essence, it is a matter of trying to make encrypted messages obvious.

Paintings that do not belong to the ‘Roma Sparita’

We begin by examining in esoteric terms some paintings by Ettore Roesler Franz that are not part of the Roma Sparita series, owned by the City of Rome, but belong to private collections.