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The Meaning Of Dark, Light And Shadows: Inferences In Art, Materiality And Cultural Practices, Frank Prendergast
The Meaning Of Dark, Light And Shadows: Inferences In Art, Materiality And Cultural Practices, Frank Prendergast
Book/Book Chapter
Our visual awareness relies on light acting on the eye to perceive materiality and colour. Medieval thought wrestled to articulate and comprehend its nature. The notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, for example, included his descriptions to define light and make comparisons so as to differentiate between light and shadow. His focus was on the illumination of surfaces from the perspective of a painter, seeing shadows as ‘the diminution of light by the intervention of an opaque body’ and ‘the counterpart of luminous rays’. In his mind, a shadow ‘stood between light and darkness’, with darkness being ‘the absence of light’. …
Facing The Sun, Frank Prendergast, Muiris O'Sullivan, Ken Williams, Gabriel Cooney
Facing The Sun, Frank Prendergast, Muiris O'Sullivan, Ken Williams, Gabriel Cooney
Articles
December 2017 marked 50 years since archaeologist Michael J. O’Kelly first observed the solar illumination of the burial chamber in the Neolithic passage tomb at Newgrange during the period of the winter solstice. O’Kelly subsequently recorded direct sunlight entering Newgrange through the ‘especially contrived slit which lies under the roof-box at the outer end of the passage roof’ on 21 December 1969. The discovery of this historic phenomenon, dating back over 5,000 years, captured the public interest and imagination at that time and ever since. In this major article published in the Winter 2017 edition of Archaeology Ireland (date of …