Mysteries Without Any Clues
How Ginevra de'Benci Beat The Reaper And Became Immortal--Part 2 in a Series
Immortality Is A Thing These Days
Especially if you’ve already achieved it.
Whether you made the big time through fame, fortune, or good looks, the temptation to lock in those earthly returns now, and beat your own Great Reset is like catnip to our elites.
And so they are predictably starry-eyed at the prospect of permanent deity through the man-machine singularity.
But just because eternal life may have migrated to the cloud doesn’t mean our betters were never less obsessed with living forever here on earth. Look at the pyramids. Or that the then-available cutting edge was unable to deliver immortality.
Today it’s all about getting a chip into your head. Or your head onto a chip.
In the Renaissance, it was all about getting yourself into a work of art.
And not just anybody’s art.
Your quality of life as a deity was a direct function of your artist’s skill and reputation. Better to be a shepherd in a manger scene by a Master, than subject of a portrait by his disciple.
Founding Mother
Our Five Stages Favorite Florentine It Girl, Ginevra de’ Benci (1457-1520), learned that early on. Just sixteen when she posed for hot new talent Leonardo da Vinci, she would have heard the oo’s and ah’s from the crowd:
That’s not a picture of Ginevra, that’s Ginevra herself!”
And could never have imagined what that would start.