Giotto’s Cosmic Riddle: The Planets and Man’s Call to Rise Above Himself

When we use Time to transcend Time through what we do with Time, we rise above Time.

When Giotto created his famous bas-reliefs in the bell tower of Florence cathedral in the 1330s, he depicted the seven planets of the medieval cosmos as diamonds and seven virtues underneath them as hexagons. It was Giotto’s riddle and a hidden message. What did he mean?

In the medieval mind, the seven planets were more than just heavenly objects. They e…