Ars: časopis Ústavu Dejín Umenia Slovenskej Akadémie Vied (44.2011)

soûls found their fulblment passing through a cave
or well. In our days, the painting is always connected
with the "Near-death-experience"A
The paintings of Turner and Bosch seem so dif-
ferent but the effect is the same. The similarity lies in
the journey from darkness into light, and its connec-
tion with a religious iconography, even though their
religious and aesthetic dimensions are different.
We know that Bosch was critical of visions, and
scorned the visionaries. For him, it was not the sud-
den breakthrough, as in Eckhardt, that was important
but rather the graduai approach to the Tord. ' His
paintings served to describe that mystical processT
In the circles, which become increasingly clearer from
one to the other, we can physically see the different
steps where angels lead the soûls to the light.
An essential différence lies in the fact that Turner
used a sort of "profane" aesthetic language. Turner
changed the grade of reality of the sky. In Hierony-
mus, we hâve a surreal cosmic environment, a more
dreamlike — surreal représentation, while in Turner
we see a natural effect of ciouds and sunlight.
Hieronymus uses the more symbolic aesthetic
typical for the Middle Ages,"" Turner instead com-

^ Light does not oniy produce the expérience of colour in the
observer's eyes, but also the expérience of a light-tunnel, if
the observer is moving at a very high speed towards a source
of light. The tunnel does not really exist, but originates in the
observers eye's — which is due to the so-called "searchlight
effect" or "relativistic aberration". A person, who travels at a
speed close to that of light, perceives the rays of light coming
from the immédiate front. This leads to a tunnel vision with a
bright light beaming at its end. — NIEMZ, M. H.: Ivyy C.
Norderstedt 2006, pp. 53-57. The physicist Markolf Niemz
concluded from the reports on near-death-experiences that
the soul is accelerated at the speed of light during the process
of death, when leaving the body with mass behind on earth.
According to Einstein's theory of relativity, the mass of a
body would become inhnitely heavy, if it were allowed to
follow the soul being accelerated at the speed of light.
- HAUG, W: Wendepunkte in der Geschichte der Mystik. In:
(= Fortuna vitrea, 16). Ed. W HAUG. Tübingen 1999, pp.
357-377.
The theory of the image and the spiritual praxis shows the
tradition to Jan van Ruusbroec.

3. 7300— 7303.
T3%A, ÆAzyyc D/WtA.

^ FISCHER, S.: fUjA. Æ/lTAAf I
KiWM/MwT Köln - Weimar — Wien 2009, p. 287.

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