Love

The Italian 16th-century philosopher and mystic Giordano Bruno devised and drew various geometric figures to which he ascribed human qualities: for the reasoning intellect, for thought, and others. A full two centuries after Bruno’s time, the German scientist Ernst Chladni developed a means to make unseen harmonics visible by striking with a violin bow the edge of a metal plate that had been scattered with sand. These Chladni patterns mysteriously mirror Bruno’s figures, and both the patterns and the figures powerfully suggest the hidden harmonies which permeate all things.

When I came to create an image based upon Bruno’s figure for love, for me the only option was to use Bruno’s own drawing, and this I have done. Centuries ahead of his time, Bruno’s progressive mind uniquely saw our cosmos as extending infinitely, abounding with worlds like our own which also harboured life, much as our current thinking – and the Hubble orbiting telescope – confirms. But in his day Bruno’s bold ideas set him on a collision course with the Church authorities. Imprisoned for heresy by the Papal Inquisition for eight years and periodically tortured, in February of the year 1600 he was at last led to the stake and burned, after which his ashes were dumped in the Tiber. To this day the Papal Office refuses to formally pardon Bruno. 

No earthly trace of Giordano Bruno remains, but his writings, ideas and drawings survive, enduring, like love itself, beyond the transience of life and mere mortal death.