The Name Game

I very much like the stained glass window. You've managed to make it 'pop' so the eye's drawn straight to it. In fact, I very much like all the colouring here - have you made some subtle changes to your usual method? There's an amazing sense of depth and texture to it all.

The 'pointing finger' motif in Renaissance painting is a really interesting one. It's a quintessential Da Vinci gesture, although Raphael and others made frequent use of it. I don't think anyone knows the reasons for certain, but the theories are legion - the context of the picture in question is usually quite important too. In pictures where a pointing finger is upraised and a cross is present, it indicates Jesus has been crucified. In pictures where a cross is present and the finger points sideways or downwards, it indicates he's still alive/will return. Often it was just the artist's way of drawing attention to a certain area of the canvas, but upraised pointed fingers often indicated the heavenly will, or the imminent coming of Jesus/a new messiah, or the prescence of the supernatural in the firmament.

Some think it goes beyond the heavenly to suggest astral bodies and all sorts of space-based shenanigans - astral-theology and all that, whih is not as far-fetched as it sounds, given that so many artists were members of secret and occult societies, fascinated by the workings of the universe but forced to cloak their theories and belieifs in all sorts of veiled iconography to avoid the eyes of the Spanish Inquisition and others. The nuttiest theory I heard was that the fingers point the way to Atlantis, if only we can work out the sequence the pictures should be read in.

So there you go.