Saturday 6 July 2013

Episode IV - Shay Given and the Forlorn Hope

A long time ago, in a country far, far away....

Well, actually it was only last June in Poland when the Irish football squad valiantly took on the likes of Croatia, Spain and Italy with the hopes of finding a way out of Group C and into the quarter-finals of the Euro 2012 competition. Alas, It was not to be...

Anyway, at the time, Vincent Zara painted this great piece on the Tuckey Street side of Ziggy's Rock & Blues Bar. It shows a multi-limbed version of Shay Given, the Irish goalie, ready to defend his net like an angry Hindu god against the slinged (slung?) and arrowed shots of his opponents....






The piece seems to be based on Leonardo da Vinci's famous and fabulous drawing called "Vitruvian Man", which dates from about 1485 to 1490, give or take a few years....



There is a Wikipedia article on the Vitruvian Man, which says:
The drawing is based on the correlations of ideal human proportions with geometry described by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius in Book III of his treatise De Architectura. Vitruvius described the human figure as being the principal source of proportion among the Classical orders of architecture. Vitruvius determined that the ideal body should be eight heads high. Leonardo's drawing is traditionally named in honor of the architect.
If you wish to find out more about this work, here is the link to the Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitruvian_Man

And here is a link to a "full resolution" version of the work on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Da_Vinci_Vitruve_Luc_Viatour.jpg

I took the photos of Mr. Zara's Shay Given piece in September 2012, a good bit after the heady hopes of those bright June days had been utterly quashed.

But still, The Dream lives on. There's always next time....

No comments:

Post a Comment