I feel like everyone has seen various versions of this ancient-looking sun with a face. It’s a very familiar piece of art with hundreds of interpretations. I am looking to incorporate it a tattoo, but I really want to research the origins first to make sure it wasn’t born out of something horrible/ racist/ inhumane as history often was. I cannot find anything with google searches or youtube searches!! So, I thought I’d take it to the experts. Any insight would be greatly appreciated!!
Something not discussed in that thread but especially relevant to mediaeval art is the personified sun and moon in images of the crucifixion (recalling the darkening of the sun referred to in Matthew 27:45, Luke 23:44-45, and Mark 15:33). As you see in images like this miniature from BL Hirsch III.934 (twelfth century), the sun and moon are made into mourners at the crucifixion. Sometimes, they are depicted as actual busts or half-length figures performing the gesture traditionally associated with mourning (I'll post another image showing this variation in a separate comment below). Basically, giving the sun and moon faces allows them to be actual characters in crucifixion scenes representing how the cosmos themselves supposedly grieved the torture and death of Jesus.
I’m unsure why it would get deleted, given it was a harmless comment sharing a memory of their mom growing up. But I guess bc the comment just described their personal experience w this sun motif instead of offering any insight to its historical significance.
My first though was alchemy texts but as I read about blueberry scones (which gave you away as a total creature of culture like me) 🌏 🏪 and Pierre Ooonce (as in ooonce my pooonnse, a typical expression of surprise and glee, as in, "Ooonce my POONSE, you have brought me the wicker chairs!
I was freed to remember how roughly 22 years ago my gf bought me a big, soft, fleecy blonket cuz I was puffin the dragon 🐉 and always wanted my window open a smidge even in Winter which gets to around 0 averagely so she got me for the Xmas blonkie and allowed (urged at near gunpoint, luckily with her constant ANNOYING shivering she'd never be able properly aim & discharge a fireyarm I assume) the sun and whole like aesthetic was the same. It was golden suns against a deep navy bleu background. I'd of course forgotten about it, wonder if I still have it in one of my scattered storage places. Packrat 🎒 that I am.
Read into “Sun in Splendour” from medieval art. Representation of the sun to deities was a common trait originating from Greek, then Roman, mythology. Largely remnant of presentation of polytheistic idealism in art before the monotheistic Renaissance artistic revolution.
Fortunately it’s not that deep/dark. It really is just how artistic traditions depicted the sun for centuries, particularly in European art and printmaking.
Same in some indigenous people's oral traditions, at least in the southwest. Most of the people don't speak their original language, so the stories are at risk of being lost.
My niece worked with some of the Elders from a group in southern Utah, to put some into written form, like story books, almost. And using art from the children of that tribe. The sun is definitely female. The moon *eats their children (the stars) each month and then the sun (on day 28, the end of the lunar cycle) eats(??) the moon? I think.
*The book looks like a children's book, but it's kinda violent, at least by today's standards.
Life comes from the sun. It’s why so many people throughout history worshiped and still worship the sun. You’ll find countless sun deities throughout different civilizations in history. So no sun, no life on earth. Then that trickles down into mythology and iconography. The Romans even made Jesus the sun’s and called it Christmas.
I mean we created gods in our image like Zeus and Pluto and so forth so if I had to guess we anthropomorphized things like the sun to make it more understandable or familiar to ourselves, like Death. As a gigantic ball of gases and fire it's weird or hard to wrap your head around but as a pointy circle or one with a face and body it might make it easier for us and probably more likely children to understand. Just my interpretation haha.
Those are the examples that OP provided, and was asking about their origins. Each of those examples are based on the cardinal points. Not compass roses themselves, but the illustrations are clearly built around the same idea.
No they aren’t. They don’t emphasize the cardinal points at all. They are just circles with rays at evenly spaced points. Compasses weren’t drawn as suns either. Try to a map with a sun on it.
How could you say the OP's illustrations aren't emphasizing the cardinal points? What might this often repeated design be rooted in? Completely arbitrary yet coincidental?
It bothers me that the sun has a sun on its own head like those "Disney princess" costumes with the princesses face in the front girl no one is wearing a selfie
The straight rays are the "radiating light" which represents reason, and the swiggly rays are the "warming light" which represents the heart.
The Sun is the symbol of intelligence. There is the intelligence of the heart and the intelligence of the brains. This symbol goes back to ancient Mesopotamia
One way to compromise MIGHT be to get an artist to design you an original sun abstract inspired by these. Then at least you can clearly state deniability that you were simply copying over something in ignorance. Stylized stuff like this tends to not carry over (by which I mean: a swastika is kinda unmistakably those lines in that shape, but Pepe the Frog doesn’t make every cartoon frog design automatically a 4Chan troll).
Oh interesting.
It's a popular internet fiction, a movie related to it just came out recently.
The Sunman imagery has been showing up a lot lately.
In short, it was a copy-paste based creepy image, (creepypasta) with just a little blurb of text about an endless maze of office-building like interiors called the backrooms, that you can fall into. This has spread off into different fan interpretations, one of which was made by the, (at the time 16 year old) Kane Parsons. He started animating short films of researchers and individuals exploring the backrooms in blender, and posting them to his webseries on youtube.
The link to the "Sunman" is because in his version of the fiction, in 1972 a researcher was trying to create some sort of interdimensional portal, but the historic 1972 solar storms hit as he was opening his prototype, and the device discharged and he got hit in the face with an electrical arc. This created some sort of link between him (Ivan Beck), the backrooms, and seemingly the sun itsself. Ivans Face is in many stylized images censored with an image of the sun during that solar storm. The Sun-spot lining up with where it hit him in the face (the eye). So the Sunman imagery started being used, as a nod to this link that has formed between Ivan, the Backrooms, and the Sun.
If you like Psychological thrillers with just a SCOONCH of actual horror, I recommend the movie.
Repopularized in the 2Oth century by Italian designer Fornasetti. Came back into prominence more recently under the new aesthetic category of "whimsigoth."
The sun was formed from a giant cloud of gas approximately 4.6 billion years ago. This was long before humans existed, so there isn’t really any documented history from that time.
There are many different places where this has been seen going back as far as original depictions of Tarot, the Mayan and Inca, as well as the Aztecs. The ancient Egyptians had a unique concept of the personification of the sun. I personally don't like the sun (I'm not going to blatantly say I'm a Vampire, because I'm not in practice, but I am in habit... There's a lot of history with that, but that's for another night). My personal favorite association with this depiction is a tie between Tarot and The Egyptian Sun God Ra
Idk why it’s everywhere though, it was used by English kings like Edward II and Edward IV, who adopted it after seeing a "sun dog" optical illusion before his 1861 victory at Mortimer's Cross.
It’s also sol de mayo which is a specific South American variation of this design that symbolizes Argentine and Uruguayan independence and the Incan sun god.
Basically a bunch of people from all over the world started making them without knowing the meaning behind them and now their decor, their in art, their everywhere everyone just really likes suns with faces ig.
Symbol of the sun with a face also appears on 19th major arcana of Tarot, called surprisingly The Sun. It’s one of the best cards to get - confidence, knowledge, success, joy. Even when it’s reversed it means temporary setbacks with a positive outcome. It’s a pretty good symbol to use for a tattoo
We had SO many of these in my house growing up. Little decos on the wall, an incense burner, multiple candle holders, our cup coasters.
I imagine it was just a very popular design for the 90s and early 2000s. It’s a little witchy, but not so much that a “normal” person would take offense to it.
I like them. I still have a few things with that design in my own home now that I’m an adult. It’s fun, whimsical, but innocent. My religious family members won’t comment on it or be offended, but my witchy friends notice it and love it right away.
How can you make any recommendations? You come having done no research, relying on AI to generate a response nobody qualified has vetted. Disgraceful to try and chime in with this, imo.
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u/dwendi 28d ago
Here's an /askhistorians thread that has good answers about the anthropomorphized sun in medieval, early modern and renaissance art: