I have been thinking about the profile pictures that show up on my blog, and realised they needed looking at. I have chosen a picture of Benjamin Franklin, a true voice of the Enlightenment. Scientist, polititian and atheist, and someone who refused to believe centuries-old superstitions. He was a visionary and thinker. He simply wouldn't accept things as they were. He was instrumental in the American Revolution and met with French revolutionaries. A very child of Voltaire.
The other picture I have selected is The Orrery by Joseph Wright of Derby. It again is a product of the Enlightenment, and shows a small group of people learning about the orbits of the planets around the sun. The use of light is striking, and there is a real sense of order in both the painting and in the Solar System. The people are ones who want to find out for themselves, rather than being prepared to rely unquestioningly of what they are told by others.
I love the music and the architecture of this period. There is elegance of form and balance in both, although the symmetry is sometimes contrived (for example those asymmetrical Georgian houses that at first glance appear to be symmetrical, and those binary form, sonata principle movements in music where the halves are of different lengths). There is contrived chaos (for example CPE Bach's symphonies Wq182, where there are melodramatic outbursts and unusual modulations which on further examination are completely in keeping with the formal structure). I love the Enlightenment.
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