Blaise Pascal, acrylic on cardboard, 2021

Pascal was a brilliant child prodigy, who went on to become one of the greatest mathematicians, physicists, inventors, and writers of the seventeenth century. The author of Pensees and the Provincial Letters has said, “Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.” This work of older Pascal, with long and curly hair, seated and facing to the left, is painted after a portrait done by French painter Philippe de Champagne (1602-1674). Adopting an ascetic lifestyle, Pascal wrote eloquently about the insoluble paradoxes of the human condition, blending stoic and skeptical arguments to bring his readers to a point of confusion and despair, at which they would accept his famous wager and embrace God.