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J. M. W. Turner:

Turner painted Sunrise with Sea Monsters around 1845.

His Sea Monsters had appeared earlier in his 1840 painting,

Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying - Typhon Coming on

 

In 1861, Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882) opposed slavery 
so much that he declined Lincoln's request 
that he command in the Union army 
because Lincoln would not denounce slavery.  
Further, 
Lincoln failed to offer Garibaldi full command of the Union army, 
something that Garibaldi,
who distrusted parliamentary democracies as corrupt and inefficient, 
felt was necessary for a military commander.

According to an 8 February 2000 article in the Guardian by Rory Carroll: "... A frayed postcard in a Turin archive has revealed one of the most audacious gambles of the American civil war. Abraham Lincoln offered the command of the northern forces to Giuseppe Garibaldi, unifier of Italy and terror of the Pope. The US president, his forces hammered by the Confederate army, turned in desperation to Garibaldi, spawning one of the great what ifs of history. Rumours of Lincoln's offer have circulated for a century and been denied by American scholars, but the document proved it was no myth, said Arrigo Petacco, a historian. He stumbled across the faded blue postcard, from Garibaldi to King Victor Emmanuel II telling the king of the offer, last week while rummaging in 90 boxes of material donated by Italy's exiled royal family. Garibaldi caught the world's imagination in 1860 after invading Sicily with 1,000 lightly armed redshirts. They defeated 12,000 Neapolitan troops, took the island and, determined to unify the Italian peninsula, invaded the mainland. They occupied Naples and unleashed a wave of support. According to Mr Petacco, the rebel, who in the 1850s had led an army in Uruguay and travelled through the US, was also a mason. The international masonic lodge successfully lobbied for him to be granted American citizenship. Garibaldi was ready to accept Lincoln's 1862 offer but on one condition, said Mr Petacco: that the war's objective be declared as the abolition of slavery. But at that stage Lincoln was unwilling to make such a statement lest he worsen an agricultural crisis. "Later they offered Garibaldi the command of one unit, rather than the whole army, but at that point it was too late and he had gone on to do other things," Mr Petacco said. "In Italy we always knew, but there was always a lot of scepticism in America. Now we know for sure." ...". There is a similar article in Il Giorno online.

It is interesting that Pope Pius IX, whose rule of the Papal States was attacked by Garibaldi, and which rule ended in 1870 when the last French troops left Rome and the Italian patriots took control, was during the USA Civil War very friendly with the Confederate President Jefferson Davis, even sending to Davis (after his defeat by Lincoln) a Crown of Thorns that is in The Confederate Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. The next year, 1871, France lost the Franco-Prussian war. During these times, plans were made for construction of the Sacre Coeur in Paris.

 

 

 


If ideas have lives of their own, is abusive enforcement of copyrights and patents equivalent to slavery?
The Typhon of the Slaver painting is the 15th card of the Major Arcana of the Tarot.
An Asian precedent of the Sea Monsters painting is
"Dragons Among Clouds and Waves" from The Nine Dragon Scroll, 
by Ch'en Jung of Sung China.  
Ch'en Jung was of the Ch'an school of painting. 
He was an administrator and provincial governor in Fukien 
who worked at land reclamation.  
"He was admired for his habits as a confirmed drunkard.  
He made clouds by splashing ink on his pictures, 
for mists he spat out water ..."

Hermes envisioned a Great Dragon, 
named Poimandres, the Mind of the Universe, 
whose wings stretched across the sky 
and from whose body Light streamed in all directions,  
in the midst of which Light there was a great darkness, 
a mysterious watery substance with a smokelike vapor.  


References: Turner, by William Gaunt, Phaidon 1971; Turner, by Michael Bockemuhl, Benedict Taschen 1993; Chinese Art, by Judith and Arthur Hart Burling, Viking 1953; The Secret Teachings of All Ages, by Manley P. Hall, Phil. Res. Soc. 1988; and Encyclopaedia Britannica.


 

 

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