Godfathers of renaissance
Great lessons to be learned by us damned faggots:
Trust in yourself, trust in eventual recognition, don't worry: with greast artists that mostly only comes after death. Nevertheless: trust in your own in craft, in humor, doubt, in recognition of the value all serious thought and science. Never fear, have patience in the face of adversity, keep yous secrets and reserves in a safe place, let the nitwits toil and tumble if they don't trust you:
All of these, including the analisis of the obscure machineries of political power by Machiavelli, were also at work at work in my home town Delft during the years of Vermeer, van Leeuwenhoek, Erasmus and Huygens with the 80 years of the Dutch independence war between the Spanish Catholics and northern Lutheran/Calvinistic reformist, locally coming to a similar dramatic culmination or, as I see it, the ultimate low when local sculptor Willem Tetrode , who was first defended by our tolerant nation's founding father William of Orange but still fell victim of the iconoclasm (beeldenstorm) which rid our city hall and 2 main churches of all ornaments, decoration and sculpture in the year 1566.
In recent years I've experiences similar forces at work (luckily in a smaller so-called more civilised and certainly less violent scale). with power hungry prudes in the center of the gay community at Lange Geer.
Luckily, they may be very loudmouth, and seem terribly successful in getting mass support in the short term, but mostly they don't see beyond the horizon, and are just looking for direct gratification. In a few years they are mostly gone, because managing long term does take more clout and patience then they have and mostly others will by then also have realised their loud mouth are of the bullying kind, completely useless in the long run, and incomparable to long term trust, love, care, dedication, hard work and patience.
