A Favorite Painting, 30

Peter Paul Rubens, Dance of the Villagers c1636

It seems to me that if you believe in any kind of spirituality, on some fundamental level you believe in a common bond across time and space between all living (and perhaps non-living) things. This bond contributes to our ability to recognize core elements of a shared humanity and therefore feel empathy for even those whose ways and manners differ significantly from our own. One of the great achievements of art is to make those connections tangible by recording something of the "spirit" of a particular time and place and making it accessible to those who see it even centuries later. Rubens' painting is a great example of that-- translating what was likely a specific local cultural experience into a transcendent moment that remains infused with an almost universally apparent expression of joy. It doesn't even matter what it is that these people are celebrating-- on the most essential level it portrays the capacity of all humans to derive happiness from something as simple as a communal dance; or even more simply, playing together. If the subjects were children, one might dismiss the activity as nostalgia for something lost; but the fact they are adults leads to the more sublime conclusion that, on some level, they are us and we are them, and there's something strangely reassuring in that interpretation.