[colin eisler] in renaissance florence, the nude again became the focus of artistic effort.onatello's david, probably commissioned by de medici, with its obvious reflection of the roman past, is a masterpiece of technical virtuosity and erotic suggestion. but it was more than that. it was also a brilliantly inventive symbol of the christian faithful, armored only in the word of god. finally, in brunelleschi's church of san lorenzo, we find the two bronze pulpits that donatello left unfinished at his death in 1466. here, for the first time in western art, we find a true late style that leads on to the work of titian and of rembrandt. leaving behind the technical perfection of his early work, donatello now engages with his material in a rougher, more direct manner-- biting into the bronze with his chisel to convey a more emotionally charged message. here in the harrowing of hell, christ's urgent figure reaches through the crowding souls to seize the arm of abraham and pull him to salvation. when christ's heavy figure surges from the tomb, it is not a joyous resurrection, but a

and we have many goddess cultures-riane eisler, the chalice & the blade - these interesting synopses. but that's the kind of thing we're looking at in terms of sign. now to mention representational symbols, well, these are the things that are distinct, or they're different from the things they symbolize. and there's no way you could have gotten to campus today, if you drove a car, if you weren't very adept at agreed-upon representational symbols. who did invent the traffic light? let's string him up. we only have one traffic light in mccomb, so i don't have to worry about that. but the traffic symbols, if you're taking your driving test, i mean, much of what goes on is that you learn to identify the agreed-upon symbols that move us along. in terms of religion, of course, we see the great symbols of the world - the cross in christianity, the star of david, these sorts of things, the om sign - these are symbols that evoke certain kinds of feelings here. an interesting one i'll mention is a presentational symbol. now, we have - up here, here's one. this is an icon. i believe this icon, i