In the contemporary world, delimiting spaces is one of the main human needs, but too often we have abused walls, building more and more borders and fences around us to delimit private property. So let’s try to see “beyond” them to see the infinite.
The sense of infinity is elusive by definition. As we read in the Encyclopedia of Mathematics, ” Infinity is a mathematical abstraction (expressed by the symbol ∞) which indicates an infinitely large quantity or which can be made to grow in an unlimited way “. It is an infinite called “potential”, that is, in progress. “ This – continues the Encyclopedia – is the concept of infinity predominantly accepted in antiquity and up to the modern era: following Aristotle, mathematical objects or entities with a number could not be thought of and were not given the possibility of actual reality. of truly endless elements.
Although infinity is elusive, it is possible to perceive it in wonderful places created by Nature or Man. And not mathematical logic, but all the arts have tried to convey to us the image of the infinite. They straightened that mathematical sign of infinity, thus transforming it into an 8, and elected it as a symbol of rebirth, an emblematic number of the plans of the baptisteries, built according to octagonal plans.
Poetry sought it, needless to say, the most beautiful by Giacomo Leopardi is actually called L’Infinito, but music – the most abstract of the arts – also does it persuasively with classical music. Trying to listen to Giovanni Pergolesi‘s Stabat mater is a unique experience in this sense, but listening to Dies Irae is also one of the few comforts in mourning because you feel the presence of someone from the immense beyond.
Who better than Giacomo Leopardi, always close to writing his verses, could trespass and we with him and glimpse the infinite? It happens above all inside or in front of human or natural masterpieces that leave us alienated by their beauty and seem to drag us into the otherworldly.
Giacomo Leopardi’s The Infinite describes exactly the sensation one feels “sitting and gazing, interminable/spaces beyond that, and superhuman/silence, and profound stillness” with the last verse of the idyll The Infinite: “And the It is sweet to me to be shipwrecked in this sea. “
1. The Sublime Cathedral of Monreale
As soon as you enter the trefoil loggia of the Cathedral of Monreale you feel small in the presence of the blessed Christ who follows us omniscient with his bovine eyes in a gaunt face dazzled by gold because inside the cathedral all that glitters is gold.
It is the Christ Pantocrator who towers in the oversized apse basin, since medieval art refuses the use of perspective and adherence to reality, to build one. Under the son of God, one feels awkward, like King William II, known as the Good, nervously kneeling before the Madonna to give her the model of the Cathedral, among ranks of archangels and angels in order of size.
The Arab and Venetian workers also covered the walls of the head of the cross and the central nave with mosaics with stories from the Old and New Testament, from the genesis to the foundation of the Church by Peter. All on a gold background. Even the walls of the side naves are marked and decorated with mosaics with pilasters with mosaic textures and patterns in which you can get lost.
The mosaic tiles under glass plates which favor the reverberation of the light created by the gold leaf, are arranged – a unique case in Italy – in a circular manner around the head of the Pantocrator who thus seems to radiate immensity, despite the dark ages of the Middle Ages! Simply the men of the time used different, more materialistic tools to make the sublime immateriality otherworldly.
2. The shipwreck in the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Milan
Opposite not only in latitude but also in architectural style is the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Milan. This time, upon entering the entrance, a sense of bewilderment pervades, caused by the central plan as if we were inside a circle that has lost its center. It’s the fault of the circular plan, to which we are no longer accustomed, after the introduction of the longitudinal nave.
Furthermore, unlike Byzantine art, early Christian art prefers bare stone and brick, which suggests a sense of poverty to which we are unaccustomed, therefore the sense of unease is accentuated in us.
3. The resurrection in San Giovanni in Fonte al Laterano
San Giovanni in Fonte al Laterano is the Lateran baptistery also from the early Christian era, which became a model and archetype of the baptisteries built in Christianity throughout the Middle Ages.
Baptismal fonts often have an octagonal shape at the base or are raised on a round structure with eight pillars. The octagonal shape is the symbol of resurrection. The number 8 chases itself to never delimit itself, that is, never end, which is why its sign is identical to that of verticalized infinity. The octagon evokes eternal life, which is achieved by immersing the neophyte in the baptismal fonts.
The number 8 is universally the number of cosmic balance and is the number of the cardinal directions combined with the intermediate directions. The octagonal plan from here will characterize all the baptisteries of the most important cathedrals, such as the baptisteries of the cathedrals of Florence, Parma, and Modena.
4. The intimacy and silence broken by mystical visions in the Convent of San Marco in Florence
The convent of San Marco in Florence, now converted into a museum, housed the cells of the Dominican friars. Tiny, dark, silent, and now empty rooms inspire a melancholic sense of isolation and solitude.
But Beato Angelico isn’t there and in front of each brother’s bed and next to each tiny window that lets little light through, he opens another one, painting mystical visions on each wall that take us out of the cells and let in more intense flashes. And it’s immediately sky.
5. The paradisiacal eternity of Giacomo Serpotta’s oratorios
The sense of infinity has always been connected to that of eternity. An eternity that one would certainly never want to spend in the caverns of cruel Hell, but blissfully in paradise. And Giacomo Serpotta anticipated this eternity in Sicilian land, stuccoing and sculpting hosts of angels and saints in the main oratories of his Palermo.
Entering each of them opens your mouth wide in amazement and your eyes open to grasp all the details, especially the most whimsical ones: he signed some of his works with snakes, lizards, or geckos, to recall his name; in order not to make a paradise too severe, the smaller angels play among themselves and some, in order not to make their friends fly away, hold them by the member and often in acrobatic poses, immortalized in stucco they do somersaults and grimaces, and so on, just raise eyes high for a fruitful retail hunt.
Luca Scarlini, the author of “Bianco tenebra Giacomo Serpotta, il giorno e la notte”, explains the oxymoron of the title to Corriere del Mezzogiorno this way: “Because the dazzling whiteness of the statues serves to hide the omnipresence of death; the brotherhoods for which Serpotta worked were all dedicated to mortuary works, central in an era in which public health and welfare did not exist ” (II). And so eternity will be a little lighter.
6. Stabat mater by Giovan Battista Pergolesi
If the visual arts sought the perception of the infinite through the most ancient styles of early Christian and medieval art, especially Byzantine art, music – the most abstract of the arts – does so persuasively with classical music. Trying to listen to Giovanni Pergolesi’s Stabat mater is a unique experience in this sense
Pergolesi has verses written by Jacopone da Todi in the 13th century sung by a female soprano and a contralto player, so the voices of two women seem to chase each other, translated in a super-human way.
According to tradition, nurtured by the musician’s first biographer from Iesi, the Marquis Tommaso di Villarosa, Pergolesi composed the music on his deathbed at the age of just 26. And approaching the end can open up to the otherworldly and eternity. Perhaps for this reason, even the most intense Dies irae constitute one of the few comforts in mourning, because they allow us to feel the presence of someone from the immense beyond, allowing us to at least touch the otherworldly.
7. Between earth and sky on the Argimusco plateau
After the works of man, we seek the sense of infinity in natural places. Starting from Argimusco. Argimusco is a plateau located about 7 km from the town of Montalbano Elicona, in the province of Messina.
Looking at eye level there are gigantic stones whose shapes recall images that are sometimes anthropomorphic and sometimes zoomorphic. It’s all the fault of pareidolia, that association of ideas that tends to bring objects or profiles with random shapes back to known shapes, as happens, for example, with clouds, while in the case of Argimusco, the rocks suggest precise images in the imagination of those who see them. Look.
Some are so similar that they raise doubts about whether they were sculpted, but studies have revealed that there is no trace of chisels or other sculpting tools: Man has not touched the profiles of the plateau: no chisel has faceted the rocks, if not rain, ice and wind, it was not the hand drill that drilled with alveolar cavities, called tafoni, the so-called Siculo or Skull, but wind erosion. The divine Michelangelo of the plateau is Nature.
But it is by looking at the sky that we understand how immense this place is, which reveals itself to be a true astronomical observatory covered by the vault of heaven. As evening falls, we witness the dawn of the moon and we can admire one of the best views of the Milky Way, which the Orante seems to be addressing, the most anthropomorphic statue of all those on the impressively hieratic plateau.
The Orante closes a majestic massif with his head bowed and his hands clasped in prayer on his breast. This praying woman is 25 meters high, caressed by the light of the stars, it seems like a new tribute to Millet’s Angelus by Salvador Dalì, who, however, never set foot here. And isn’t this an otherworldly Nature?
8. So far, so close to the moon, the muse of all the arts
Our satellite has inspired poets and songwriters. Ludovico Ariosto makes it a receptacle for his lost senses. In poetry, Giacomo Leopardi again dedicates the Canto Alla luna to her and in the first stanza of the Nocturnal Song of a Wandering Shepherd of Asia, the poet from Recanati makes the shepherd, his alter-ego, address directly to the moon questioned on the meaning of its perpetual cycle, noting the analogy that runs between the monotony of the lunar course and that of the daily life of the herdsman.
The moon is here the emblem of Nature and the cyclical nature of life, the same that we see in the mathematical sign of the infinite cyclical nature which is inseparable from the sense of infinity. The moon is even the protagonist of the history of cinema, which began to exist with Georges Méliès ‘ A Trip to the Moon.
Although light years away, it illuminates us every night according to its lunar phases. But it is with the moon landing that the infinite distance that separates our planet from its satellite is canceled.
9. Cheops’ solar boat and the eternal cycle of nature
The eternal cycle of Nature – Leopardi complains about it so much – concerns all the stars, even the Sun which guarantees our existence on Earth. This eternal cycle has always impressed civilizations, since the most ancient ones, such as the Egyptians.
The Cheops solar boat is one of the oldest and best-preserved boats of antiquity. Today we can admire the reconstruction, but it was found shattered into thousands of pieces, the wood of which was preserved intact for more than 4600 years, in a pit near the pyramid of Cheops, who used it throughout his life.
After his death, the boat was torn to pieces on the Giza plateau and buried there together with the pharaoh. For the ancient Egyptians, similar funeral honors played a crucial role. They believed that when the pharaoh died, he would need a boat to ferry him to the afterlife, furthermore the boat guaranteed the uninterrupted existence of Egypt. The Egyptians believed that, during the day, the sun moved in the sky and the Pharaoh with the star. At night he ventured into a sort of dark space that was supposed to illuminate demons and beasts that wanted to feed on him and, therefore, the sun rose again in this continuous and eternal cycle. This boat took on a fundamental value because the pharaoh guaranteed the rising and setting of the sun, the continuity of the cosmos, and the survival of Egypt.
10. Infinity in a Pale blue dot
When the astrophysicist and writer Carl Sagan, in 1990, having been traveling for 13 years on Voyager, was near Neptune, he asked to take a photograph that was not initially planned and which went down in history: he asked to photograph the Earth from Neptune, 4 billions of kilometers away.