Columbus At The Convent Of La Rabida Analysis

Good morning ladies and gentlemen.
Discovery underpins the human condition in its entirety. It impugns widely held beliefs about society and the natural world that surround individuals. Robert Frost’s poems Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening and Mending Wall, explore the metaphysical elements of discovery and the society in which they live respectively. His narrators are challenged to uncover new truths about the community they inhabit. Columbus at the Convent of La Rabida, Sir David Wilkie’s oil on canvas, examines how the drive to discover is present in all. Ultimately, all three texts objectify how experiences of discovery challenge beliefs about the human experience and the world.
Metaphysical exploration enables an individual to uncover

Wilkie’s Columbus at the Convent of La Rabida is a painting of various learned man gathered around Columbus, who is explaining his intended voyage, and examining it. Wilkie delves into the innate compulsion to learn, thus leading to new attitudes towards the world. The salient image of the white map in the middle of the painting highlights the human need to explore the unexplored. As the brightest object in the painting, it symbolises the physical representation of the innate human compulsion to learn. The entire piece’s chiaroscuro embodies the movement of all present in the painting from a darkened state of mind to an enlightened one, its framing encapsulates even a child and all of their gazes are fixed on the map; the vectors drawing the viewer’s own eyes to it. It emphasises the universal human desire to obtain more knowledge through first hand experiences, ascertaining a changed view of the world by the learning of what was unknown. These encounters challenge societies to re-invent their beliefs about the world they inhabit, realising the connection between the compulsion to learn and intellectual development. The painting itself is grounded in a moment of revelation as its composition is based on Titian’s Supper at Emmaus, where Jesus reveals himself to his disciples. Wilkie elucidates that in wanting to learn, there are inevitable moments of revelations, encouraging viewers to realise that all experience this. Thus, it is evident that the inherent human need to explore is ubiquitous, it prompts those who partake in it to develop mentally and enlarge their beliefs on the