Majorityrights News > Category: Art & Design

Humphreys makes the case that Nero was actually a much more benign, benificant and popular ruler than portrayals through the Jewish popularizing perspective of Christianity would have people believe. Nero actually transformed Rome from a wooden to a marble city; refining Roman life in many ways, in fact, with the development of parks, recreation and culture; thereby displaying contemplation and concern for matters far better than any preoccupation with persecuting Christians. It was thus necessary for Jewish interests to fabricate through Christianity, the popular notion of Nero as evil.

Part 2, 9:14 -

Demonizing of Nero Begins:

The Jews, in rebellion from 66, identify the personification of evil - Beliel - with the Roman emperor. In coded “revelation” the Beast is Nero. His death stiffened Jewish resistance.

Messianic sectarians concoct an apocalypse (later called the Testament of Hezekiah) which equates Belial with the Antichrist, an “indwelling” spirit of evil.

The last years of Nero’s reign saw the Jews in rebellion.

In Rome, following Nero’s suicide, political strife divides the nation… 

The Flavians, humble soldiers, were desperate to legitimize their new regime (by daunting contrast to the popular ruler, Nero). Hence the completion by Vespasian of the temple of Claudius. For the Flavians, Nero had been a weak, effeminate ruler. They had little interest in his cultural conquest, but gave the biggest, bloodiest festival of all to the Roman people; the amphitheater, lavishly financed by the plunder of the Jewish temple.

Related at Majority Rights:

MR Interview of Kenneth Humphreys by James Bowery Concerning the Syncretic Origin of Christianity
http://www.majorityrights.com/audio/KenHumphreys.mp3

From Faces of Ancient Europe and by way of Renegade, 2 March 2019:

Botticelli’s Muse Simonetta Vespucci

Simonetta Cattaneo de Vespucci (1453 – 26 April 1476), nicknamed la bella Simonetta,was an Italian noblewoman from Genoa, the wife of Marco Vespucci and the cousin-in-law of Amerigo Vespucci, Italian explorer, navigator & cartographer.

Simonetta was Botticelli’s muse and Italy’s 15th century Florentine “super model”. Simonetta Vespucci’s figure would help shape the Renaissance. She was born in a village near Genoa, some believe Porto Venere (Venus Harbour, where it is said that the Goddess Venus stepped from the sea). She was married at the age of 15 and died at 22, her short but sweet life inspired one of the greatest artists of Renaissance and the wealthiest men in the world.

She arrived in Florence, the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance, as a fifteen-year old bride, her husband Marco Vespucci was a noble man and had close ties to the Medici’s. In a few short years Simonetta Cattaneo de Vespucci would catapult to fame as the most beautiful woman in Italy, beloved of an entire city.

In 1469, the city of Florence was entering its golden age of power and influence. Young Lorenzo de Medici and his brother Giuliano had just taken control of the Medici house upon the death of their father Piero. Although the Medici’s did not openly rule in the city, everyone knew to whom the government of Florence answered.

Lorenzo de Medici enjoyed power and banking and used his great wealth to surround himself with the finest painters, sculptors, poets, philosophers, and intellectuals of his day, among them, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Botticelli.

These most prominent Renaissance men got together and created a canon of beauty. They decided the rules of what makes the perfect woman. They believed that such a woman didn’t exist outside art, poetry or their wildest imaginations, until Simonetta arrived in Florence.

The prolific artist, Sandro Botticelli, whose masterpieces include The Birth of Venus and Primavera, studied art alongside da Vinci in the studio of Andrea del Verrocchio during the 1460s. Botticelli was on his way to becoming a well-known artist, but had not yet met his muse, that is, until Marco Vespucci and his pretty new wife, Simonetta moved next door.

Botticelli fell hopelessly in love with Simonetta, who often posed for him in the nude. Certainly she was Botticelli’s Venus; her long, swan-like neck, straight aristocratic nose, flowing golden hair and curvy figure, were the model on which many of his masterpieces were based. In La Bella Simonetta, Botticelli had met his muse. He painted Simonetta over and over again, even years after her death.

Botticelli wasn’t the only artist to paint Simonetta, she sat for Piero de Cosimo and others. She became the Renaissance equivalent of Marilyn Monroe and though she was married, besotted noblemen lavished her with gifts and parties, poets and musicians wrote about her and for her; Artists competed for her time as a model. She enchanted all of Florence, perhaps all of Italy, with her loveliness and vibrancy.

 

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Colin Cowdrey

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DM, “Police call for Notting Hill Carnival to be banned after 31 officers attacked during the two-day event”, 30 Aug 2017:

  - Police were slashed with broken bottles, spat at, bitten and had acid thrown at them
  - In one of the worst confrontations, three PCs had bloody spit sprayed in their faces
  - Frontline police said ‘enough is enough’ and called for organisers to help safeguard them
  - Four people were stabbed, more than 300 arrested and dozens of weapons seized

The Notting Hill Carnival was branded a disgrace last night after it was revealed that 31 police officers were attacked during the two-day event.

They were slashed with broken bottles, spat at, bitten and had acid thrown at them.

In one of the worst confrontations, three PCs had bloody spit sprayed in their faces by a man claiming to be HIV positive.

Frontline police said ‘enough is enough’ and called for organisers to help safeguard those who dedicate their lives protecting others.

Four people were stabbed, more than 300 arrested and dozens of weapons seized during Europe’s biggest street carnival. Although there were fewer arrests than last year’s record 454, a three-week crackdown had seen hundreds banned from attending.

Ken Marsh, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation representing the capital’s 32,000 rank-and-file officers, said at least 31 officers were attacked.

‘We cannot carry on like this. It is a disgrace,’ he said. ‘My brave colleagues were attacked for just doing their job.

‘This is not acceptable. What other event would be allowed to carry on regardless with so many police colleagues under attack?’

‘There is a growing lobby calling for the carnival to be moved to Hyde Park and made ticket-only to deter opportunist criminals. Changes were first proposed in 2000 when two men were murdered. In 2008 there was a riot.

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I may have sold Gauguin short in terms of his ethnographic conscientiousness. I’d been citing him as an example of the “artistic genius” who wasn’t worth it for his moral failing. There is still a good measure of truth to that, but he may not have been quite as heinous and without effort to be considerate as I had thought in terms of concern for what is important to other people - at least those of Tahiti and their culture. My line had been that as an artist he is as satisfying as any to me, nevertheless as a man who infected who knows how many native girls with syphilis, he was a killer. His art, no matter how good, not worth that behavior.

         
                Gauguin in Tahiti: Search for Paradise (1967)

Even so, as I watch this biography, a couple of mitigating facts are revealed. True, he still would have infected at least one native girl with syphilis. However, he married her and apparently did not know that he had the disease when he infected her. Still bad, of course, as there was no effective treatment for the disease even with French civilization settled there.  Add to that his knowledge of the risks of his own promiscuity beforehand along with his ultimate abandonment of his first wife, French wife and kids back in France.

However, the biography reveals that before he fell ill, he was really concerned to find and help preserve the authentic Tahitian people and culture. With that, he was dismayed by the impact of French civilization and missionaries, how they’d already by his time begun to destroy the native culture. He was particularly bothered by the imposition of Christian schooling upon the native children that had by then caused them to lose their native religion. He would actually go to the children and their parents with a French law book - reading them their rights so that they would know that they did not have to go to the missionary school. Finally, he went so far as to try to recreate their native religious stories in writing and in his paintings…