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As I visited the Kimbell Art Museum toady, I ran across a beautiful piece of artwork
that caught my eyes and that, I felt would be a great representation for my project.
The artwork that I am viewing today is the Apostle Saint James the Greater Freeing the
Magician Hermogenes. As I gaze upon this extraordinary, magnificent piece of art-work I noticed that
there are many different things going on. For starters, Ill start with the weather,
on one side you have beautiful sunny weather. Not to hot and maybe low wind. Verses the
other side who has a pretty bad storm brewing. As I look further, I see good on my right
and evil on my left, which both seem to be there for this one man pictured in the middle.
Whom I believe is the Magician Hermogenes himself. Maybe this man was struggling with
his evil side to be good. Or maybe he was a good man, and just one time in his life
he allowed evil to over power him. In attendance we have good to my right pictured in pink,
which I believe appears to be God, and we have evil to my left which appear to be demonic
creatures. It also appears that there's a priest and maybe a king and or queen or maybe
just someone of royalty which are present to help assist him rid himself of this evil.
It looks as if the first steps the priest took to help this man was to bound him with
some type of rope. I believe this painting is about spiritual
war in a biblical sense. The reason I believe this is about a spiritual war is because in
this picture evil is here to overpower this man who is a child of god. I believe evil
or demonic sprits main objective, is to do the complete opposite of god, which is the destroy,
hurt, and change peoples way of thinking to line up with Lucifer's way of thinking.
I believe this art-work would have meant a lot to people who had lived in the 13th or
14th century. I believe or I think it would really benefit anyone
really, because we all at some point in our lives struggle with doing good or not doing
the right thing. Whether it be decision making, actions. or thoughts. When I view this artwork
I get a little excited, because to me it's like watch the start of a suspenseful movie.
The reason, why I feel this way is because the artist depicted the demons with pitch
forks and what I thick is God with what seems to look like some sort of staff or horn. According
to Kimbell Art museum website this painting was influenced by a book in the 13th century
referred to as the Golden Legend. Saint James is the man in the pink robe who favors Christ
and The Magician Hermogenes who set out to destroy Saint James is in Red. The man in
the middle is a formal disciple of the Magician who was converted by Saint James. According
to the website the Magician Hermogenes was captured by demons pictured to the left. The
Saint has no desire to seek revenge, so he instructs the formal disciple to loosen the
bounds of his former master. In this picture Saint James was doing the Christian thing
by returning a good for a bad, which Christ, has taught him to do.
I believe my interpretation was off a little, but still on the same lines as Christianity
and demon sprits. This comparison reassures my religious beliefs
and things I learned growing up in the church.