Ruins of the Jupiter Temple in Athens 1904

Csontvary made this painting of the Ruins of the Jupiter Temple in Athens with oil on canvas. Look at those brushstrokes! They give everything this sort of vertical lift, even the sky feels pulled upwards. I wonder what it was like for him, standing there, looking at these ruins. I imagine the stillness, the quiet of the stones, but also the vibration of history, you know? Like, all the people who have stood in that exact spot, thinking about life and time. The muted shades of ochre and lavender create an atmosphere of contemplation. There’s something almost otherworldly about those columns. I can imagine how Csontvary would have been fascinated by this juxtaposition of monumentality and decay. He was exploring something about permanence, about the things we build and how they eventually return to the earth. Isn’t that what we are all doing? Maybe that's what painting is too: an embodied act of searching and seeing.