Father Time

Revision as of 20:22, 14 May 2025 by imported>Citation bot (Added work. Removed parameters. | Use this bot. Report bugs. | Suggested by Abductive | Category:All articles with too many examples | #UCB_Category 395/780)
(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

Template:Short description Template:About Template:Use dmy dates Template:Multiple image

Father Time is a personification of time, in particular the progression of history and the approach of death. In recent centuries, he is usually depicted as an elderly bearded man, sometimes with wings, dressed in a robe and carrying a scythe and an hourglass or other timekeeping device.

As an image, the origins of "Father Time" are varied.<ref>Hall, 119</ref> The ancient Greeks themselves began to associate Chronos Protogenos with the god Cronos, who had the attribute of a harvester's sickle. The Romans equated Cronos with Saturn, who also had a sickle, and was treated as an old man, often with a crutch. The wings and hourglass were early Renaissance additions and he eventually became a companion of the Grim Reaper, personification of Death, often taking his scythe. He may have as an attribute a snake with its tail in its mouth, an ancient Egyptian symbol of eternity.<ref>Hall, 119-120</ref>

File:Grave memorial 3.jpg
Father Time on an Irish memorial stone, displaying an empty hourglass to a mourning widow

New YearEdit

Around New Year's Eve, the media (in particular editorial cartoons) use the convenient trope<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> of Father Time as the personification of the previous year (or "the Old Year") who typically "hands over" the duties of time to the equally allegorical Baby New Year (or "the New Year") or who otherwise characterizes the preceding year.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In these depictions, Father Time is usually depicted wearing a sash with the old year's date on it.

Time (in his allegorical form) is often depicted revealing or unveiling the allegorical Truth, sometimes at the expense of a personification of Falsehood, Fraud, or Envy. This theme is related to the idea of veritas filia temporis (Time is the father of Truth).

In the artsEdit

Template:Example farm Father Time is an established symbol in numerous cultures and appears in a variety of art and media. In some cases, they appear specifically as Father Time while in other cases they may have another name (such as Saturn), but the characters demonstrate the attributes which Father Time has acquired over the centuries.

ArtEdit

Visual artEdit

File:Romanelli Chronos and his child.jpg
Chronos and his child by Giovanni Francesco Romanelli, National Museum in Warsaw, is a 17th-century depiction of Titan Cronus as "Father Time" wielding the harvesting scythe

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

  • Landscape with Time and Truth, a 1639 painting by Nicolas Poussin.
  • Time Defending Truth Against the Attacks of Envy and Discord, c. 1641, ceiling painting by Nicolas Poussin.
  • Time Reveals the Truth, a 1650 painting by Theodoor van Thulden.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
  • Time Reveals the Truth: The Allegory, a 1657 painting by Theodoor van Thulden, State Hermitage Museum.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

  • Time Being Overcome by Truth, a c. 1665 painting by Pietro Liberi, private collection.
  • Vanitas: Time Reveals the Truth, a c.1670 painting by Giovanni Domenico Cerrini.
  • Time Destroys Beauty, a seventeenth-century painting by Giovanni Domenico Cerrini.
  • Time Revealing Truth, late seventeenth- or early eighteenth-century painting by Sebastiano Ricci Belluno.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

  • Time Hunting Envy and Discovering Truth, an eighteenth-century fresco by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo at the Villa Loschi-Zileri outside of Vicenza, Italy.
  • Truth Rescued by Time, Witnessed by History, an 1812–14 painting by Francisco Goya, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

  • Father Time was the logo for the Elgin Watch Company, with Father Time's traditional hourglass traded out for a pocket watch.

SculptureEdit

|CitationClass=web }}</ref> The museum also owns a drawing that is a study for a similar clock.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

  • Truth Unveiled by Time is the name and subject of a sculpture by Bernini, though the figure of Time was never executed.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

BooksEdit

  • Old Father Time appears in the fantasy novel series Nightside by Simon R. Green, as an elderly character tending to peoples' needs for time travel—and in some cases—guidance.
  • Father Time appears in the fairy tale themed short story, written by L. Frank Baum. Entitled "The Capture of Father Time". That Father Time was captured by the son of an Arizonian cowboy named Jim because of his foolishness.
  • Time is one of the Incarnations of Immortality in Piers Anthony's series of the same name. Time (also referred to as "Chronos") appears in several of the books and is the main character of Bearing an Hourglass. For most of the series he appears as a middle-aged man in a blue robe (which has the power to age to oblivion anything which attacks him) and bearing an hourglass which he can use to control the flow of time and move through both time and space.
  • Father Time is painted in the ceiling of the dungeon, in the Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Pit and the Pendulum".
  • In Mitch Albom's book The Time Keeper, Dor, the central character, is Father Time. He is freed from exile and sent to Earth on the condition that he teaches two people on Earth the true importance of time, a teenage girl who does not wish to live anymore, and a dying old billionaire who wishes to live forever.
  • "Little Father Time" is a character in Jude the Obscure, a novel by Thomas Hardy. The name is given to Jude Fawley's son, who is dreadfully melancholy and who commits suicide and kills his siblings at a young age.
  • Father Time also appears in C. S. Lewis' novels The Silver Chair and The Last Battle which are the final two novels (chronologically) in the series The Chronicles of Narnia.
  • In Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, he is referred to as Time and is responsible for making the Hatter and his friends to have an endless tea party as punishment.

Comics, magazines and periodicalsEdit

  • Father Time made numerous appearances in the classic comic Little Nemo in Slumberland, both as a general representation of time and as a symbol of the new year.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Film and televisionEdit

MusicEdit

See alsoEdit

ReferencesEdit

Template:Reflist

  • Hall, James, Hall's Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, 1996 (2nd edn.), John Murray, Template:ISBN

External linksEdit

Template:Time in religion and mythology Template:New Year