This Painting Captured The Bare Human Condition In Only 8 Words
In 1656, Salvator Rosa created the darkest and most accurate meme of all time
The word “meme” is universal in our language. It feels like the term has always been with us. But it has a technical birth date. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins coined “meme” in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, deriving it from the Greek mimema (imitated.)
Dawkins compares memes to genes, since both replicate, carry information, spread, and mutate. It’s a clever concept but not exactly novel. While the traditional meme is a picture with occasional words sprinkled in, the idea that pictures can spread meaning is ancient.
Our ancestors began this practice of painting on the walls of caves, and it evolved with us as our color palette and skills improved.
The wizards of the Renaissance took it to another level. However, we generally call their masterpieces “art,” not memes, even though their works convey great meaning and spread.
The mixture of words and pictures enables deep concepts to be passed on economically, like the fragility of life with the inevitability of pain and death. Salvator Rosa’s 1656 painting L’Umana Fragilità (Human Frailty) did just this.
