CMP Review 2025-09-25

September 25, 2025

“Diogenes appears on the steps among other philosophers in Raphael’s celebrated mural School of Athens (1509–11) at the Vatican,” writes Peter Trippi; “thus Waterhouse’s situating of Diogenes near a staircase makes a knowing pun.”

He goes on: “educated viewers knew that Diogenes, when greeted by Alexander the Great, requested that the emperor not ‘stand between me and the sun’. Here the boldest maiden does just that, causing Diogenes to scowl.”

One of the grown-up children in our multi-generational “family school” read these words after our picture study of J. W. Waterhouse’s 1882 Diogenes, one of his many masterpieces that make me long to see a painting of his in person.

No explanation was needed by the reader regarding Raphael’s mural or Alexander the Great’s encounter. These gems of art and history had been long ago lodged in our family’s collective memory. And so Plutarch, picture study, and many other subjects contribute to a feast that often seems to lack boundaries, as one dish spills over into another.

Or perhaps a better analogy is how a song, a sound, or a scent can bring up seemingly unrelated memories, memories that warm the heart and enliven the soul.

@artmiddlekauff