Thursday, January 15, 2015

From today's lessons: like the game of Telephone

We are using William S. Taylor's book Seeing the Mystery for this term's study of Christ in art. While I like the book, I'm finding that Taylor and/or his editors weren't always careful about getting the proper names of artists and works.  First case in point was something he called the "Spatzi Madonna"; it appears that he meant the "Pazzi Madonna."

Today's lesson mentions Indian artist Angela Trindade. Taylor refers to her as Angela Trinidade, and luckily Google Search suggested Trindade instead so I didn't waste a lot of time on the misspelling. But the funny thing I noticed is that Taylor's mistake has been copied into at least one other book, another book on Christian art that came up in the Google search and that cites Taylor's description of Trindade's work. "Trinidade" and all.

It's just a little thing, but it sure does show how small facts and names should be checked and double-checked. And that even if you find it in a book, you had better not always assume that the author got it right, or that their source had it right.

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