Dante, Series 4

Homo is a born astrologer. Even more: physics began with astrology. At the conclusion of Antiquity, Plotinus conceived the cosmos as a Procession of the luminous One to the shady Multiple, at the same time as a Recession from the Multiple to the One, based on Ten Skies. This is what Dante again saw, a thousand years later, through Dionysius the Aeropagite. Micheline Lo had failed to underscore this aspect in her three suites of the thirty-three Canti of Il Paradiso, and she had to revert to this. Following the narrative order of his Commedia, Dante had been an astrologer, from the bottom to the top, from the Moon to the Empyrean. As both Plotinus and Dionysus had it, Lo's painting could be read both ways. Let us decide that, for the sake of instruction, we shall read them from top to bottom.

(10) L'Empyrée, that is the-fire-inside, strictly transcendent, can be glimpsed only as set back behind the ellipse of an outsize eye. (9) Le premier mobile is the principle of native geometries. (8) Les étoiles fixes inaugurates initial physical functions, but only preformed, preforming. (7) Saturne inaugurates colored formations, under primitive preformations recalled over a demarcation line.

(6) With a black-feathered wing, Jupiter opens the social field. (5) Mars shows that this Order must needs be accompanied by Conflict, Heraclitus' "polemos patèr pantôn", a clash of horizontal and vertical bars against a red background. (4) And now, in splendor, comes the Justicier, "Noon the Righteous", the King, the Sun, blue and gold. (3) Vénus, the morning star, gathers all that coolness which, according to Ungaretti, is the unique privilege of the Mediterranean ontology, that of Homer, Virgil, and the auroral Dante of the Purgatorio. (2) Mercure is witness to the trouble of our minds and senses. (1) La Lune, misty, earthy, with its pale lights, finally places us there, where we live.

After this, the artist had only to resume those ten skies, in very large and very concrete form (7 x 7.4 feet), as ten skies, this time rather small and very abstract (3.3 feet square). The final square of the Empyrean was the painter's farewell to Dante's Paradise.