Port of Ostia During a Tempest by Leonardo Carlo Coccorante Essay examp

As I stood staring at the beautifully detailed oil-on-canvas painting, my mind began racing, conjuring up random stories behind all the people, the place, and the weather in this painting. This painting, titled Port of Ostia During a Tempest by Leonardo Carlo Coccorante, is nothing more than just a story portrayed on a canvas and its words, the oils, are scattered all over it, depicting a story about a populous port going through some horrible weather and the people experiencing it first-hand. The interactions between the people are perfectly portrayed and from each one a different story can be contrived—each sharing the subject of the brutal weather. The amount of detail in this scenic painting is overwhelming; thus, countless thoughts rush the mind when carefully studying every little section of this painting. One basic point that I dwelled on while studying the painting was the lighting and the way Coccorante seemed to separate the painting in half with the contrasting dark and light. The dark half shows two suffering boats out at sea being caught up in the tempest, while the lighter side shows the caravans of people that have made it out alive onto the shore and rocks. As for the people caught in the middle of the light and dark, they are seen trying to make their way off the boat and it appears as if they’re trying to step into the light and away from the dark. One can deduce that the ship in the middle has recently harbored next to the rock site since the majority of the people in the painting can be found atop the rocks; the impressions of relief on their faces point to the idea that they have just finished unloading themselves from the docked ship and have found safety among these rocks. On the other hand, the paintin... ...ifferent times of observation. It just goes to show you that according to Hume and psychological topics (mostly relating to the cerebral cortex) the old saying, â€Å"we begin by being foolish and we become wise by experience", can be directly related to life and to our pursuit of knowledge. Works Cited Gladwell, Malcolm. Blink: the Power of Thinking Without Thinking. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2005. 14. . Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. 2003. Project Gutenberg. 27 Sept. 2006 . Instituto De Fisiologia Celular. "A Close Look to the Cerebral Cortex." About.Com. 28 Sept. 2006 . Wikipedia. "Malcolm Gladwell." Wikipedia.Org. 19 Sept. 2006. 28 Sept. 2006