Early production

LYR Aspinall 0-6-0ST No. 752, rebuilt from a Barton Wright 0-6-0 tender loco at Horwich

The first locomotive to built by the LYR at Horwich works was a 2-4-2 tank engine designed by John Aspinall. This locomotive was LYR No. 1008 which is now preserved at the National Railway Museum. By 1899 a further 677 locomotives had been built, and another 220 under Henry Hoy. Between 1891 and 1900, 230 0-6-0 tender engines designed by Barton Wright were rebuilt at Horwich as 0-6-0ST saddle tanks as LYR Class F16.

In 1899, the Aspinall-designed 'Atlantic' 4-4-2 express passenger locomotive was introduced and forty had been completed by 1902. Horwich works produced its thousandth engine in 1907, a four cylinder compound 0-8-0.

[edit] Takeover and activity under LMS ownership

In 1923 when the railway became part of the LMS, its Chief Mechanical Engineer was George Hughes who remained at Horwich. In 1926 he was responsible for the design of a 2-6-0 mixed traffic locomotive which had an unusual appearance for the time, which became known as the "Horwich Crab." The class proved to be extremely successful, with 245 engines being built, 70 of them at Horwich, including the first 30 examples. The "Crabs" continued in service with British Railways London Midland and Scottish Regions until the last two survivors were withdawn in early 1967.

Three of the four future Chief Mechanical Engineers of the post-grouping railways learned their craft at Horwich: Nigel Gresley, Henry Fowler and Richard Maunsell, as well as aviator Alliott Verdon-Roe who went on to found the Manchester-based Avro aeroplane company.

During World War II, the works built nearly 500 Cruiser, Centaur and Matilda tanks.

[edit] Nationalisation and closure

LMS Stanier Class 5 4-6-0 M4751 with Caprotti gear at Manchester London Road on 27 March 1948, 14 days after completion at Horwich.

LMS Ivatt 4MT 2-6-0 M3009 (later 43009) with double chimney, shortly after completion at Horwich in 1948

After the nationalisation of 1948, locomotive construction at Horwich continued at a high level for another ten years. During that year twenty new LMS Ivatt Class 4 tender engines were completed. Another twenty-seven examples followed in 1949, with twenty-four in 1951, followed by a single final example in early 1952.

120 LMS Stanier Class 5 4-6-0 tender engines were also built at Horwich by the LMS (53 locos) and British Railways (67 locos) between 1945 and 1950. The last BR Standard design steam engine to be built at Horwich was outshopped in 1957.

BR continued to overhaul steam engines at Horwich for several more years. The last steam locomotive (Stanier LMS 8F 2-8-0 48756) was despatched after overhaul on 4 May 1964.

Horwich continued in use as a works for other rolling stock up to 1983. The foundry and the spring shop continued in use after this date, although the work force was reduced from 1400 to 300. In this form it was sold by BREL to the Parkfield Group in 1988. The rail connection to the works was finally removed in 1989.

The site is now an industrial estate, appropriately named "Horwich Loco", with most of the buildings still continuing in use.

The railway station at Horwich was primarily used by employees at the works and it was opened on the 14 Feb 1870 (Quick's Chronology). It closed in 1965 with the last passenger train from the station departing on the 27th Sept 1965 hauled by 2-6-4T number 42626 (Railway Magazine Dec 1965 p705)

1. ~HBWE~, 2. ~She's a "Lucky" one~, 3. flickr.com/photos/8545275@N06/2793845578/, 4. ~Catch a falling star~, 5. ~Green Acres~, 6. ~In the weeds~, 7. Dainty dancers....HBW!!, 8. ~Sending you an Angel~,

9. ~Just the two of Us~, 10. Little house on the "prairie"....HBWE!!, 11. ~Lucky Star~, 12. ~Color my World~, 13. Will look adorable for treats....HFF!, 14. Tomorrow may rain, so I'll follow the sun...., 15. Ballerina girl.....HBW!!, 16. The flight of the bumblebee....HBWE!,

17. flickr.com/photos/8545275@N06/2749479317/, 18. ~We can complain because rosebushes have thorns or rejoice because thornbushes have roses!~, 19. ~Summer Lovin~, 20. flickr.com/photos/8545275@N06/2737937483/, 21. May I pour you another glass of bokeh...., 22. ~I've got the warmth of the sun~, 23. ~Holding your heart in the palm of my hand~, 24. Mom! Milo won't stop touching me! HFF!!,

25. "Brown eyed" girl...HBW!!!, 26. Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light. ~Helen Keller~, 27. Mmm...taste the sweetness..., 28. Dare to be different...., 29. Really? There's sunshine? Move over and let me see...HFF!, 30. ~Rainy day fun~, 31. If you go out in the woods today.....HBW!!, 32. flickr.com/photos/8545275@N06/2692391869/,

33. ~Pinkalicious~, 34. Every cloud has a silver lining....., 35. You're going to ship me where?! HFF!!, 36. Cherry pie in the sky....., 37. ~Crimson and Clover~, 38. What makes you think "I" ate it?, 39. There were bells on a hill....., 40. Have a beautiful Sunday!,

41. ~Into the Mystic~, 42. flickr.com/photos/8545275@N06/2656128376/, 43. Am I blue...yes, I'm blue...HBW!!!, 44. Everything gets "hotter" when the sun goes down...., 45. Cheers, Lori! Happy birthday, sis!, 46. White lace and promises...., 47. Cheers....., 48. ~Say cheese!~ (it's all about the camera, baby),

49. Let me take you down..cause I'm going to...., 50. The "midas" touch.., 51. flickr.com/photos/8545275@N06/2618521363/, 52. Muah! Glad we can be friends, Mitzi! HFF!!, 53. Hark! Are those birdies I hear singing...., 54. As every cat owner knows...nobody owns a cat!, 55. Like Strawberry wine..., 56. ~Happy Birthday~,

57. "Bee" is for bokeh...HBW!!!, 58. ~Fallen Stars~, 59. My baby with her baby...., 60. The greatest gift I ever had came from God; I call him Dad...., 61. flickr.com/photos/8545275@N06/2576182892/, 62. A Hard Day's Night...., 63. Tiny Dancers....HBW!!!, 64. Great advice for a Monday!,

65. If my heart had wings....., 66. It's Friday, see eye to eye....HFF!!, 67. We all need somebody to lean on...(Happy anniversary!), 68. Pastels! HBW!!!, 69. Hello there, flickr friends!, 70. A grandfather's love...., 71. A touch of "gold"...., 72. Sunny day....chasing the clouds away...

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

The cab of 18 inch gauge steam locomotive, Number 6 Bill, a 2-4-0 tender locomotive built by Western Australian Perth based engineering firm, Willis Engineering in 1992.

1. Side view, 2. Aim, 3. Water quiffs and windmills, 4. Coming in to land .., 5. Colours of nature, 6. Colours and feathers, 7. Manky Marbles Abduction to Mars, 8. Flames,

9. Lit up one week done ., 10. The non conformist .., 11. Wicklow harbour ., 12. Reflected windows in the moonlit canal Amsterdam ..., 13. Colourful canals Amsterdam.., 14. A little slice of the chocolate life, 15. Horse and carraige and cobblestones.., 16. flickr.com/photos/42419413@N02/8161880385/,

17. Glendalough village .., 18. Glendalough village .., 19. Chilly coral, 20. The ghost on the lid., 21. The tube in the cube, 22. The sky, 23. Cloud z500, 24. Untitled,

25. Raindrops are falling on my head lol, 26. Looking at the light, 27. look what the beard got lol, 28. The fun place, 29. Dappled, 30. Complicated, 31. On the edge, 32. Pink Lady.,

33. Hues of blues, 34. Underwater sky, 35. A view across Ireland to the Irish sea., 36. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder., 37. Life is all about balance .. lol, 38. Nature gave me ribbons and bows ., 39. Beautifull Spring is here,, 40. I can see in the dark.,

41. A Light Bright Twirly Delight ., 42. One little miracle of nature ,, 43. Red is the rose,, 44. Lines and lights in Dublin., 45. The moon, 46. Contained circles reflected....!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, 47. Daggers of light in the storm, 48. Romantic sunset sings to me !!!!!!!,

49. Stop the world im ready to get back on !!!!! haha., 50. Goodbye i am Going to seek the sun for the summer, 51. Daisy chains in the sun., 52. A journey through space and time., 53. Irish landscapes Wicklow, 54. Roadway to blue moon city., 55. Just Love., 56. Into the Light.,

57. Happy St Patricks Day to one and all, 58. The Valley In County Wicklow Ireland., 59. Force of nature Ireland, 60. Autumn leaf, 61. Little pink heather in the snow, 62. Late autumn glory, 63. Ireland through my Irish eyes, 64. Soaring higher and higher towards the heavens,

65. My favourite little home, 66. Lucky Strike, 67. Sunny smile touch my heart, 68. Colour me beautiful mother nature, 69. Charming Paris stroll along the river, 70. salt, 71. Water water everywhere Wexford, 72. Tall and proud,

73. metal web in latern light, 74. Spiral stairs out of control

Created with fd's Flickr Toys

1. Tree Stars, 2. Magpie With a Skink, 3. Resting, 4. Gentoo on Polished Rock, 5. Magpie in Song, 6. Silver Fern, 7. Preparing To Dive, 8. Low Cloud,

9. Alleluia, Alleluia, Earth To Heaven Replies, 10. Perched on a Post, 11. B Chick, 12. Leader of the Pack, 13. Group B Fledgling, 14. Mother and Calf, 15. Tennille in the Rain, 16. Paradise Valley,

17. Tongariro - Ngauruhoe, 18. Jack in the Rain, 19. Rhinoceros Kiss, 20. Tahi, Rua, Toru, 21. Pukeko 'Hoki Koki', 22. Lock-Down, 23. Koru, 24. Lurking in the Shadows,

25. Wasp, 26. Tongariro Dawn, 27. Monochrome, 28. Royal Spoonbill, 29. Juvenile on a Tombstone, 30. Spur-Winged Plovers, 31. Fearsome Yawn, 32. "Nevermore",

33. Portrait of a Juvenile Magpie, 34. Back-Lighting, 35. Kea, 36. Flying Reptile, 37. Heron in Rain, 38. Kingfisher Perch, 39. Looking back to Ngauruhoe, 40. Magpie Fly-By,

41. Starfish Gathering, 42. Winter, 43. Tiger - Auckland Zoo, 44. Kelp Gull Flight, 45. Gazing at a Sunset Sky, 46. Albatross Fly-By, 47. Ruapehu Sunrise, 48. Dead Leaf,

49. Fungi on Pandora, 50. Land of Rainbows, 51. Kealakekua Bay, 52. Golden Plover, 53. Motutara, 54. Huge Ice, 55. A Walk in the Park, 56. MY POND!,

57. Tembo, 58. Clouds Over Ruapehu, 59. In-Flight Kingfisher, 60. Stone Carving, 61. Spoonbill Flight, 62. The Wild, Wild West, 63. Raven in Juneau, 64. Poles,

65. Brothers, 66. Close-Up in Kaikoura, 67. Tawhai Falls - Slow, 68. Legs, 69. Someone Did Not, 70. Sitting Bull, 71. Red-Tailed Black Cockatoo, 72. Little, Lost Bear

The 1924 Targa Florio winner car was a 2 liter, 4 cylinder, super-charged Mercedes, with Chistian Werner at the wheel. This car is an early example of the famous Merceds Compressor series, culminating in the famous SSK and SSKL.

Unlike the usual white livery of the Mercedes racers, this car was actually painted red: Rumour has it this was a camouflage strategy to stop Italian fanatics from throwing rocks at the passing car, because it might be taken for Italian.

In the 1920ies, the race cars were actually driven to the race track on public roads like normal automobiles. For this trip, mudguards and license plates had to be mounted, to comply with traffic regulations. My model is shown in both configurations: as a slick racer, and as a roadworthy automobile.

Lego model with four-cylinder engine, two speed gearbox, differential, leaf spring suspension, steering, and operational hand crank.

ROMA ARCHEOLOGICA & RESTAURO ARCHITETTURA 2020. «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. The NYT (18 Aug. 2020) & Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (13 Apr. 2020). S.v., "Raffaello architetto", in: The NYT (06 March 2020); Università di Padova (20/07/2020); Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020); Jhon Correa / Facebook (1 July 2020) & Prof. Cammy Brothers (2001). wp.me/pbMWvy-uQ

1). ROME - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. Scuderie del Quirinale (5 March - June 2020).

A monographic exhibition with over two hundred masterpieces among paintings, drawings and comparative works, dedicated to Raffaello on the 500th anniversary of his death, which took place in Rome on April 6, 1520 at the age of just 37 years old.

The exhibition, which finds inspiration particularly in the Raffaello's fundamental Roman period which consecrated him as an artist of incomparable and legendary greatness, tells his whole complex and articulated creative path with richness of detail through a vast corpus of works, for the first time exposed all together.

Many institutions involved have contributed to enrich the exhibition with masterpieces from their collections: among these, in Italy, the National Galleries of Ancient Art, the National Art Gallery of Bologna, the Museum and the Real Bosco di Capodimonte, the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, the Brescia Museums Foundation, and abroad, in addition to the Vatican Museums, the Louvre, the National Gallery of London, the Prado Museum, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Albertina in Vienna, the British Museum, the Royal Collection, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lille.

Fonte / source:

--- Scuderie del Quirinale (5 March - June 2020).

www.scuderiequirinale.it/mostra/copia-di-raffaello

2.1). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483», in: Intervento delle Scuderie del Quirinale per la maratona del MiBACT "Italia chiamò" / Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (Mar 13, 2020).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8l6q9ywLxY&t=112s

2.2). ROME - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. / English / Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (Apr. 13, 2020). www.youtube.com/watch?v=s58gYvvNrKQ&t=61s

3). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. Scuderie del Quirinale (05/03 - 02/06/2020).

Il 6 aprile 1520 muore a Roma, a trentasette anni, Raffaello Sanzio, il più grande pittore del Rinascimento. La città sembra fermarsi nella commozione e nel rimpianto, mentre la notizia della scomparsa si diffonde con incredibile rapidità in tutte le corti europee. S’interrompeva non solo un percorso artistico senza precedenti, ma anche l’ambizioso progetto di ricostruzione grafica della Roma antica, commissionato dal pontefice, che avrebbe riscattato dopo secoli di oblio e rovina la grandezza e la nobiltà della capitale dei Cesari, affermando inoltre una nuova idea di tutela. Sepolto secondo le sue ultime volontà nel Pantheon, simbolo della continuità fra diverse tradizioni di culto, forse l’esempio più emblematico dell’architettura classica, Raffaello diviene immediatamente oggetto di un processo di divinizzazione, mai veramente interrotto, che ci consegna oggi la perfezione e l’armonia della sua arte.

A distanza di cinquecento anni, questa mostra racconta la sua storia e insieme quella di tutta la cultura figurativa occidentale che l’ha considerato un modello imprescindibile. La mostra, articolata secondo un’idea originale, propone un percorso che ripercorre a ritroso l’avventura creativa di Raffaello, da Roma a Firenze, da Firenze all’Umbria, fino alla nativa Urbino. Un incalzante flash-back che consente di ripensare il percorso biografico partendo dalla sua massima espansione creativa negli anni di Leone X. Risalendo il corso della vita di Raffaello di capolavoro in capolavoro, il visitatore potrà rintracciare in filigrana la prefigurazione di quel linguaggio classico che solo a Roma, assimilata nel profondo la lezione dell’antico, si sviluppò con una pienezza che non ha precedenti nella storia dell’arte. Grazie ad un numero eccezionale di capolavori provenienti dalle maggiori raccolte italiane ed europee, la mostra organizzata dalle Scuderie del Quirinale insieme con le Gallerie degli Uffizi, costituisce un’occasione ineguagliabile per osservare da vicino le invenzioni dell’Urbinate. Il suo breve, luminoso percorso ha cambiato per sempre la storia delle arti e del gusto: Raffaello rivive nelle sale dell’esposizione che lo celebra come genio universale.

Fonte / source:

--- Scuderie del Quirinale (05/03 - 02/06/2020).

www.scuderiequirinale.it/mostra/raffaello-000

3). ROME «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. The NYT (18 Aug. 2020).

ROME - In the Virtual (and Actual) Footsteps of Raphael - In Italy and beyond, the plan was to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Renaissance artist’s death with great fanfare. Then came the pandemic, and the virtual world stepped in. The NYT (18 Aug. 2020).

______

Also see:

--- ROME - Rome Celebrates the Short, but Beautiful, Life of Raphael - Amid new coronavirus restrictions on museums in Italy, a blockbuster show traces the artistʼs life from finish to start. The NYT (06 March 2020).

www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/arts/raphael-rome-coronavirus....

______

This was supposed to be the year of Raphael. Five hundred years after his death at 37, the Renaissance master was due to receive the exalted rollout reserved for artistic superstars: blockbuster museum shows in Rome and London; conferences and lectures at universities and cultural centers around the world; flag-waving and wreath-laying in his Italian hometown, Urbino. There was even the tang of controversy when the advisory committee of Florence’s Uffizi Gallery resigned en masse to protest the inclusion of a precious papal portrait in the big exhibition at Rome’s Scuderie del Quirinale. Then the coronavirus hit and Raphael’s annus mirabilis turned into the world’s annus horribilis.

When news of the handsome young artist’s death broke in Rome on April 6, 1520, Pope Leo X wept and church bells tolled all over the city.

Half a millennium later, Rome was in lockdown along with the rest of Italy as deaths from the virus spiraled. The Scuderie show, a once-in-a-lifetime gathering of more than 200 works (120 by Raphael) from all over the world, was forced to shut its doors after just three days, despite having presold a record 70,000 tickets. Raphael’s tomb in the Pantheon was supposed to be adorned with a red rose every day of 2020 to commemorate his death — but the ancient temple was also shuttered because of the virus. Lectures and conferences were canceled, postponed or moved online.

Poor Raphael. Last year, the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death came off without a hitch. Raphael’s devotees hoped that this

year’s celebrations would restore the artist’s luster, which has dimmed over the past centuries. When the world fell ill this past winter,

Raphael was one of the casualties. But all is not lost. The Scuderie show reopened on June 2 and will remain up until the end of August. The Scuderie’s president, Mario de Simoni, had expected as many as 500,000 people to see the show pre-virus, but now says the number probably won’t exceed 160,000. For those unable to attend in person, the Scuderie has released an English-language version of its excellent video, recapping the highlights of the exhibition, room by room. You’ll want to hit the pause button in Room 2 to admire two masterpieces on loan from the Louvre: a selfportrait with a friend and the portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, one of the glories of Renaissance portraiture. The close-ups of his paintings of women in Room 6 testify to the artist’s passionate appreciation of feminine beauty. Other Scuderie videos (in Italian) delve into particular aspects of his genius — for instance, the jewelry worn by his female subjects, or the literary world he moved in.

Tour guides such as Clam Tours and Joy of Rome now offer virtual journeys in which small groups can zoom around Italy in the footsteps of the artist. On Sept. 13, for example, you can join the Renaissance specialist Antonio Forcellino and other Italian art experts on Clam Tour’s virtual exploration of Raphael’s incomparable frescoes of the four sibyls at Rome’s Santa Maria della Pace church ($25). Check out Joy of Rome’s free two-minute video about Raphael’s frescoes at the Villa Farnesina to see if you’d like to sign up for a two-and-a-half hour virtual tour (prices on request).

Even on a laptop screen, Raphael’s ever-evolving craftsmanship and quicksilver brilliance are apparent. “The year of Raphael has not

been ruined, but simply modified,” said Marzia Faietti, a curator of the Scuderie show. “Since many conferences and lectures have been

put off until next year, in a sense there will be two years of Raphael.”

For Italians, a silver lining of the pandemic has been the opportunity to relish their cultural treasures without the tourist hordes. “I cried,”

said Francesca Pagliaro, founder of the Joy of Rome tour company, of the experience of standing alone in the Vatican’s recently reopened

Sala di Costantino — one of four rooms in the museum frescoed by Raphael and his students, and which you can view here. “It’s the first

time in five years that I’ve seen the Stanze without scaffolding — and I had it to myself,” Ms. Pagliaro said. “It was magical.” Americans, barred from European travel for the foreseeable future, will have to make do with all this virtual magic. Not ideal — but Raphael’s magic is powerful, subtle and enduring enough to withstand the challenge.

The spirit of Urbino

I can attest to this because back in November 2019, I had the opportunity to follow in Raphael’s actual, not virtual, footsteps in Italy. I stood

shivering in the room where he was born in Urbino in 1483. I knelt at the austere tomb in a niche inside the Pantheon where he was

interred 37 years later. I feasted my eyes not only on paintings and frescoes, but on the humble church and glorious Roman chapel that

attest to his emerging genius for architecture. My pilgrimage would be impossible today — but thanks to the wonders of the internet and

the resourcefulness of Italy’s leading cultural institutions, I can remotely retrace my steps, refresh my memories and relive the

revelations.

The first revelation came, aptly, in Urbino’s Palazzo Ducale, the magnificent Renaissance palace constructed in the late 15th century by the

humanist and warlord Federico da Montefeltro that now houses the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche. Judge the magnificence for yourself

by clicking through Google Images’ impressive photo archive. Another click puts you face to face with the museum’s sole work by Raphael

— the haunting portrait known as “La Muta” (“The Mute Woman”). As in so many of his portraits, Raphael posed this stern beauty against a solid dark background, eschewing any visual cues that would evoke a sense of place.

How, I wondered, did Urbino influence the art of its most famous son?

I posed this question to Peter Aufreiter, then director of the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, when I sat down with him in his office in the

Palazzo Ducale. Mr. Aufreiter’s response was to click on an image of Raphael’s 1507 portrait of Federico’s son, Duke Guidobaldo da

Montefeltro (now in the Uffizi), and then summon me to the window. “Look at the hillside across the valley and that house at the base of

the hill — it’s the same background Raphael put in his painting of Guidobaldo.” You can see exactly what Mr. Aufreiter meant by using the

magnify feature on this online image. Urbino’s steep green landscape, limpid light and crystalline architecture — you can also get a good sense of it here — imprinted themselves on the artist’s young mind and surface repeatedly in his work.

Even though Raphael spent most of his career in Florence and Rome, Mr. Aufreiter insists that Urbino, whose cityscape has changed little

since the Renaissance, is where you can feel his spirit most intensely.

The spirit is palpable in the artisans’ quarter surrounding the house where Raphael was born, the son of the local court painter Giovanni

Santi. Near the summit of the ski-slope-pitched Via Raffaello, just a stone’s throw from the rather pompous bronze monument of the artist

erected in 1897, the Casa Natale di Raffaello has been preserved as a museum. There’s a rather rudimentary virtual tour on its website, but

you’ll get a better feel for the interior and exterior spaces in this YouTube video. In these bare simple rooms and the deep brick courtyard

they enclose, little imagination is required to dial the scene back to Raphael’s apprenticeship in the last years of the 15th century. Giovanni

Santi’s bottega (workshop) occupied the ground floor, and the future master grew up amid the bustle of painters grinding pigments,

dabbing madonnas and trading in art supplies.

Father and son conducted a more exalted commerce at Urbino’s Palazzo Ducale. Fabricated of brick, stone and flawless geometry, this

palace was one of the glories of the Italian Renaissance — not only for its divine architecture, but for the refined elegance of the nobles

who gathered here. This video captures some facets of the palace’s perfection — the way its silhouette pierces the profile of surrounding

hills, the ideal proportions of its noble courtyard, the interplay of volume and decoration in its interior.

Baldassare Castiglione set his 1528 masterpiece, “The Book of the Courtier,” in this storied palace — and it was here that the young

Raphael polished his manners, sharpened his wit, cultivated invaluable connections and acquired a lifelong passion for classical antiquity.

Raised at court, Raphael was pursued by the powerful (Popes Julius II and Leo X), esteemed by the brilliant (Castiglione and the Urbinoborn

architect Donato Bramante were close friends) and adored by the beautiful. “Raphael was a very amorous person,” wrote Giorgio Vasari, his first biographer. It was Vasari who originated the claim that Raphael died after an overindulgence in sex with his Roman mistress, Margherita Luti. Whatever really killed him on April 6, 1520, Raphael accomplished much and rose high in his brief life — but he never ceased to be “il maestro Urbinate,” the master from Urbino.

A couch-surfing brush-for-hire.

Orphaned when his father died in 1494 (his mother had died three years earlier), Raphael spent his teenage years as an apprentice before

undertaking commissions in Umbria and Tuscany. It’s likely that he was in Florence by 1504 — not as a permanent resident but rather a

couch-surfing brush-for-hire.

Though Raphael’s footsteps in Florence are faint, there is no question that he encountered the works of both Leonardo da Vinci and

Michelangelo here — including, very likely, the Mona Lisa, which you can view here, and the marble statue of David, which you can see

and read about on the Accademia’s detailed website. Critics and connoisseurs have been measuring this Renaissance trio against each other for 500 years now. Florence’s Uffizi Gallery is the ideal place to revisit this rivalry, both in person and virtually. After a recent renovation, paintings by the big three have been put on display in two beautifully lit adjoining rooms, and you can find them on the Uffizi website.

To my eyes, neither Michelangelo nor Leonardo ever matched the sheer painterly virtuosity of the fringed white collar that Raphael stitched around the neck of the cloth merchant Agnolo Doni, or the faint dent he incised between the young businessman’s anxious brows (use the magnify function to zoom in on this image). Agnolo’s 15-year-old bride, Maddalena Strozzi, hangs beside him, posed like the Mona Lisa with bejeweled hands clasped on her lap, but clad in a kaleidoscope of watered red silk, embroidered blue damask and shimmering gauze. Across the Arno are the glories of the Pitti Palace’s Galleria Palatina — the largest collection of Raphael’s works outside the Vatican. Unlike the Uffizi, the Pitti Palace retains the ambience and layout of an aristocratic residence: Paintings are stacked three deep in gilded high-ceilinged chambers; works are arranged idiosyncratically rather than chronologically; and the lighting can be maddeningly inadequate. Luckily for remote visitors, the lighting is much better on the palace’s website, as well as in the Italian and Spanish language videos about the museum’s treasures, posted here.

To the Eternal City

Raphael was summoned to Rome in 1508 by Pope Julius II, and he remained there until his death in 1520. Those 12 final years in the

Eternal City marked the apogee of his career. Painter, architect, entrepreneur, archaeologist, pioneer printmaker, Raphael became the

prototype of the artist as celebrity — the Andy Warhol of the Renaissance.

In pre-pandemic Rome, visitors had to endure the lines and tour groups that plagued the Vatican Museums in order to spend a few crowded moments with one of Raphael’s supreme accomplishments: the four papal chambers, known as the Stanze di Raffaello, that the artist and his workshop frescoed between 1508 and 1520. These days, in-person visitors to the reopened Vatican Museums enjoy the Stanze along with the nearby Sistine Chapel in ideal conditions. But remote visits can also be rewarding, thanks to the beautifully produced videos and virtual tours now available on the Vatican’s website. With the click of a mouse, you can hop back and forth between the virtual Sistine Chapel ceiling and the Raphael Stanze and decide for yourself which is the greater masterpiece.

“Everything he had in art, he had from me,” the curmudgeonly Michelangelo once grumbled of his younger rival. When you view their

roughly contemporaneous fresco cycles one after the other (or side by side on your computer), it’s clear that Raphael did much more than

borrow. “The School of Athens,” the most celebrated work in the Stanze, has the propulsive tension of a film paused at its climactic scene.

Cast members — a mix of classical philosophers and Renaissance savants — converse, argue, scribble, read and declaim on a sprawling,

but unified, “set” framed by classical architecture. By contrast, Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling, for all its bravura, reads like a series of

static cels.

After the Vatican’s Raphael Stanze, a logical next stop, whether actually or virtually, is the Villa Farnesina, with its two beguiling frescoed

loggias — “The Triumph of Galatea” in one of the loggias and “Cupid and Psyche” in the other. Despite the name, this riverside Trastevere landmark is neither a villa nor originally a Farnese property, but rather a suburban pleasure pavilion that Agostino Chigi built for himself in the early 16th century. Chigi brought in the finest artists of the day to fresco the loggias; the result is a delightful crazy quilt of mythological scenes and astrological symbols. Raphael’s “Galatea,” with her wind-whipped tresses, elegantly torqued bare torso and dolphin-powered, scallop-shell raft, has become an icon of High Renaissance grace and wit, and you can see it and other highlights in the villa’s video archive. Even if you don’t speak Italian, the short films are worth delving into for the imagery alone.

From painting to architecture

In the last phase of his career, Raphael increasingly turned from painting to architecture. Sadly, his major architectural achievements — the grand unfinished Villa Madama perched on a wooded hill two miles north of the Vatican, and the classically inspired Raphael loggias inside the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace — were inaccessible to the public even before the pandemic, and remain so. To get a sense of Raphael’s architectural genius, make (or click) your way to the church of Santa Maria del Popolo in the piazza of the same name at the northwest edge of the historic center. Like so many transplants, Raphael fell under the spell of the Eternal City’s classical substructure: Rome itself, its layers, its ruins and relics, its ceaseless commerce with the past, became a source of inspiration. The chapel he designed for Chigi inside the Popolo church evinces just how deeply and fruitfully Raphael internalized this inspiration. At first glance, it’s just another church chapel — tight, high, adorned with art and inlaid with precious stone. But on this site you can glimpse the almost miraculous geometry of this space — the interplay of disc and dome, the rhythm set up between the vertical pleats of the Corinthian pilasters and the elongated triangles of the twin red marble pyramids that mark the Chigis' graves. Fittingly, the artist who devoted the final years of his career to measuring, cataloging, preserving and mapping Roman antiquities, was laid to rest in the greatest classical structure to survive the ages: the Pantheon. If a trip to the physical Pantheon is not in the cards, you can drop in with Tom Hanks as your guide in this clip from the film “Angels and Demons.” As for his tomb — an easy-to-miss niche with a statue of the Virgin, modest and vague, presiding over the glassed-in coffin — you can view it here.

Marzia Faietti, curator of Rome’s Scuderie show, has been struck by how the virus has enhanced Raphael’s reputation and heightened

awareness of the twin beauties of his art and character. “Young people in particular have reacted with an outpouring of enthusiasm and

benevolence which I really didn’t expect,” she said. “The pandemic has brought suffering to so many, but the year of Raphael will be

remembered more vividly, not despite the virus, but because of it.”

Fonte / source:

--- The NYT (18 Aug. 2020).

www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/travel/in-the-virtual-and-actu...

Foto / fonte / source:

--- ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483», et al., Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (05/03 - 02/06/2020) (08/2020).

www.youtube.com/user/ScuderieQuirinale/videos

4.). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483»., in: "Raffaello architetto e la Lettera a Papa Leone X." Università di Padova (20/07/2020).

Artista dal talento straordinario, affermato, corteggiato, desiderato. Questo, ma non solo questo, fu Raffaello Sanzio (1483-1520): l'esperienza come architetto, lo studio e l'impegno per la tutela degli edifici antichi di Roma sono di importanza centrale nel suo percorso, a partire dalla realizzazione di opere come la Cappella Chigi e Villa Madama, fino alla stesura, insieme a Baldassarre Castiglione, della Lettera a Papa Leone X. La grande mostra Raffaello 1520-1483, allestita alle Scuderie del Quirinale di Roma, prorogata fino al 30 agosto, dedica ampio spazio alla sua appassionata attività nel campo dell'architettura.

"Sin dai primi anni di formazione, l'interesse di Raffaello per l'architettura, in particolare per quella del mondo antico, è fortemente presente - racconta il professor Zaggia al Bo Live - Fino a sfociare in un'opera fondamentale come Lo sposalizio della vergine, in cui compare un tempio a pianta centrale sullo sfondo che interpreta in modo molto chiaro le sperimentazioni del suo tempo in ambito architettonico. A questa sperimentazione dell'architettura sul piano della rappresentazione, segue poi, con il trasferimento di Raffaello a Roma tra il 1508 e il 1509 e l'incontro con Bramante, un interesse concreto rivolto alla costruzione e alla progettazione vera e propria. Da questo punto di vista, il rapporto che si instaura tra Raffaello e Bramante per lo studio dell'architettura antica, conservata all'interno della città, diventa fondamentale punto di partenza per un approfondimento che aprirà strade nuove all'architettura successiva. Con la morte di figure di riferimento, come Bramante appunto, Raffaello diventa la personalità più importante che opera nel campo dell'architettura all'interno dei grandi cantieri pontifici. Si apre così una stagione breve in cui le opere realizzate da Raffaello saranno numerose e importanti: alcune realmente costruite, altre solo progettate".

In questo contesto si inserisce la Lettera a Papa Leone X, scritta nel 1519 da Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione, il raffinato autore del Cortegiano (ai due, uniti da amicizia e stima reciproca, è dedicata una mostra al Palazzo Ducale di Urbino, dal titolo Baldassarre Castiglione e Raffaello.Volti e momenti della civiltà di corte), sul tema della tutela e dello studio degli edifici antichi. La premessa al documento è rintracciabile nei fatti avvenuti qualche anno prima: nell'estate del 1515, infatti, Leone X nomina Raffaello præfectus marmorum et lapidum omnium (dal 1514 l'Urbinate già dirigeva la fabbrica di San Pietro). La lettera dedicatoria, la cui prima edizione venne inserita all'interno delle opere di Baldassare Castiglione pubblicate a Padova nel 1733, si apre così: "Sono molti, padre santissimo, i quali misurando col loro piccolo giudizio le cose grandissime che delli romani circa l’arme, e della città di Roma circa al mirabile artificio, ai ricchi ornamenti e alla grandezza degli edifici si scrivono, quelle più presto stimano favolose che vere. Ma altrimenti a me suole avvenire; perché considerando dalle ruine, che ancor si veggono di Roma, la divinità di quegli animi antichi, non istimo fuor di ragione il credere che molte cose a noi paiono impossibili, che ad essi erano facilissime".

Nella prima parte Raffaello esalta la grandezza del passato, dichiara le proprie competenze in ambito architettonico e invita il pontefice a intervenire per garantire la tutela dei monumenti antichi, da salvare dal degrado. Nella seconda invece si concentra su questione più tecniche, introducendo anche la descrizione di uno strumento per la misurazione degli edifici antichi di sua invenzione: "Farassi adunque un instromento tondo e piano, come un astrolabio, il diametro del quale sarà due palmi o più o meno, come piace a chi vuole adoperarlo, e la circonferenza di questo istromento si partirà in otto parti giusti, e a ciascuna di quelle parti si porrà il nome d’uno degli otto venti, dividendola in trentadue altre parti picciole, che si chiameranno gradi [...] Con questo adunque misureremo ogni sorte di edificio, di che forma sia, o tondo o quadro o con istrani angoli e svoglimenti quanto dir si possa".

"L'importanza della lettera risiede nei principi enunciati all'inizio del testo, in cui Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione sostengono la necessità e l'urgenza di tutelare i monumenti antichi, per trasmetterle alle generazioni future - conclude Zaggia -. Non a caso la lettera, pubblicata alla fine del Settecento, una volta riconosciuto l'autore in Raffaello, diventa il punto di partenza per la legislazione adottata successivamente dagli Stati europei per la protezione del patrimonio artistico e culturale. Erede ultimo di questa tradizione è l'articolo 9 della nostra Costituzione".

Fonte/ source:

--- Università di Padova (20/07/2020).

ilbolive.unipd.it/it/news/raffaello-architetto-lettera-pa...

4.1). ROMA / Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020): «Raffaello 1520-1483»., "Raffaello architetto e la Lettera a Papa Leone X." S.v., Lettera a papa Leone X di Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione; in: Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020).

Nella galleria fotografica potrete scorrere la lettera di Raffaello e Baladassare Castiglione a papa Leone X. Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione, Lettera a papa Leone X, s.d. [1519]. Manoscritto cartaceo costituito da 6 carte di formato 220 x 290 mm circa, ripiegate a formare fascicoletto non rilegato di 24 facciate, di cui 21 scritte, 3 bianche. ASMn, Archivio Castiglioni (acquisto 2016), busta 2, n. 12.

Fonte / source:

--- Lettera a papa Leone X di Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione, in: Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020).

www.archiviodistatomantova.beniculturali.it/index.php?it/...

4.2). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. Scuderie del Quirinale (05/03 - 02/06/2020), in: Jhon Correa / Facebook (1 July 2020). www.facebook.com/jhon.correa.7549

4.3). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Lettera a papa Leone X di Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione. S.v.,

Prof. Cammy Brothers, “Architecture, History, Archaeology: Drawing Ancient Rome in the Letter to Leo X & in Sixteenth-Century Practice,” in Coming About…A Festschrift for John Shearman, ed. Lars R. Jones and Louisa C. Matthew. Cambridge: Harvard University Art Museums (2001): 135–40 [in PDF].

Fonte / source:

--- Prof. Cammy Brothers / academia.edu. (2020).

neu.academia.edu/CammyBrothers

A 2.3 km train ride over the rough and raging Bay of Bengal to the Rameswaram temple island in South India.

The bridge constructed by the British over a 100 years ago and still in good condition is a marvel of engineering. Until recent times, the bridge formed Pamban island's only link with the Indian mainland. Thousands of Hindu pilgrims on pilgrimage to the holy Hindu shrine of Rameswaram traverse it everyday. The ride is fascinating, but scary when you look down at the choppy sea below, and wonder what could happen if a storm pushes the train off the bridge!

www.laliesorbet.com/

1. Taliailat, 2. Hollerith card, 3. White hole, 4. Snake, 5. Well, that escalated quickly, 6. Slipping under, sliding down, 7. Hook, line, and sinker, 8. Yello,

9. Markthal, 10. Cables, 11. Waving, 12. Colorblind, 13. Tic tac toe, 14. White, 15. Turquoise, 16. Snail,

17. Blind, 18. C'est ou, la tour Eiffel?, 19. Golden sunset, 20. Modern living, 21. Pouring, 22. Around the corner, 23. Spiraling up, 24. Turn the page,

25. Black and white waves, 26. Under the bridge, 27. O, 28. Embrace, 29. Serpent, 30. Those twinkling vixens with the shining spiral eyes, 31. Riding the golden waves, 32. 18:11,

33. Confused?, 34. Modern living, 35. Eco?, 36. Centipede, 37. Anchors away!, 38. And it was up, up and away, 39. Ins blaue hinein, 40. Into the blue,

41. Fly-by, 42. Leave the table, 43. You've got it all backwards!, 44. Stop smoking, 45. UFO, 46. Modern living, 47. Noone goes in, 48. Upskirt,

49. Swoosh, 50. Drippin' bokeh, 51. Soccerfield on Mars, 52. Don't leaf me alone, 53. This is the modern world, 54. Waiting for the train, 55. Leaf on red, 56. wtf,

57. Go bike dot dot dot, 58. The dark castle, 59. I hate flowers, 60. Let spring in, 61. Spring, 62. Not Eyjafjallajökull, 63. \_/, 64. Green edges,

65. Harvest time, 66. Casa luminosa, 67. Last of the snow, 68. Tall buildings, 69. Lines, lines, lines ..., 70. Rollercoaster ride, 71. Approaching summer, 72. Ghostly shadows

Created with fd's Flickr Toys

1. Plums, 2. *), 3. Happy FF - mega bokeh style!, 4. Grapes, 5. The Origami Chewer, 6. bottle in the window 171/365, 7. Retour (at Hurricane Ridge), 8. My Summer....., 9. Tea + daisies, 10. Drifting, 11. toy horses, 12. Me.., 13. wandering horses, 14. E6 in C41, 15. Butterfly on a window, 16. no one was watching, 17. Winter walk 170/365, 18. coping, 19. ♡, 20. , 21. BIRTH OF A NEW DAY, 22. Cobbled path leading down to harbour lighthouse, 23. stormy skies, 24. wings, 25. sunflowers, 26. Yes it's summer time, 27. Ready to Party, 28. The Way Through the Woods - Happy Birthday Anna Maria!!! Many kisses my sweet friend, 29. Festival of Roses ii, 30. De·li·cious, 31. The Casita Next Door, 32. El Mag de les tenebres / The Wizard of Darkness, 33. Lamb, from North Berwick West Beach, 34. Untitled, 35. Spring is coming, 36. ♧ PINK PETALS ♧

Get that mammogram accomplished early!

For the group 2015 Alphabet Challenge, this fits the theme of A is for Another.

2/365: 2 January 2015

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!

It took China long way to develop and produce a true supersonic fighter aircraft: in March, 1964, Shenyang Aircraft Factory began the first domestic production of the J-7 jet fighter. However, the mass production of the aircraft, which had been developed through Soviet help, license production and reverse-engineering, was severely hindered by an unexpected problem—the Cultural Revolution. This incident and its consequences resulted in poor initial quality and slow progress.

Production was still continuing in small numbers in late 2016, but the number of built specimen is uncertain. About 150 J-7DH are supposed to be in active service, mostly with PLANAF Northern and East Fleet units. Unlike many former J-7 variants (including its ancestor, the PLAAF's more or less stillborn C and D variants), the J-7DH was not offered for export.

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 14.61 m (47 ft 10½ in)

15.69 m (51 ft 5 in) with pitot

Wingspan: 7,41 m (24 ft 3½ in)

Height: 4.78 m (15 ft 8½ in)

Wing area: 28.88 m² (309.8 ft²)

Aspect ratio: 2.8:1

Empty weight: 5,892 kg (12.977 lb)

Loaded weight: 8,240 kg (18.150 lb)

Max. take-off weight: 9,800 kg (21.585 lb)

Powerplant:

1× Guizhou WS-13 turbofan with a dry thrust of 51.2 kN (11,510 lbf)

and 84.6 kN (19,000 lbf) with afterburner

Performance

Maximum speed: Mach 2.0, 2,200 km/h (1.189 knots, 1.375 mph)

Stall speed: 210 km/h (114 knots, 131 mph) IAS

Combat radius: 1.050 km (568 nmi, 652 mi) (air superiority, two AAMs and three drop tanks)

Ferry range: 2,500 km (1.350 nmi, 1.550 mi)

Service ceiling: 17,500 m (57.420 ft)

Rate of climb: 195 m/s (38.386 ft/min)

Armament:

1× Type 30-I 30mm (1.18") cannon with 150 rounds in the port forward fuselage;

7× hardpoints (6× under-wing, 1× centerline under-fuselage) with a capacity of 3,000 kg maximum (up to 500 kg each); Ordnance primarily comprises air-to-air missiles, including PL-2, PL-5, PL-7, PL-8, PL-9 and PL-11 AAMs, but in a secondary CAS role various rocket pods an unguided bombs of up to 500kg caliber can be carried

The kit and its assembly:

Another Chinese whif, and again a MiG-21 derivative - a fruitful source of inspiration. The J-7DH is not based ona real world project, though, but was rather inspired by an article about a Chinese 2020 update for the MiG-21 from Japan, including some drawings and artwork.

The latter depicted a late MiG-21 with some minor mods, but also some characteristic F-16 parts like the chines and the BWB flanks grafted to it - and it looked good!

Since I recently butchered an Intech F-16 for my Academy T-50 conversion (primariliy donation the whole landing gear, including the wells), I had a donor kit at ahnd, and I also found a Mastercraft MiG-21MF in my stash without a true plan. So I combined both for "something Chinese"...

The build was pretty starightforward - except for the fact that the Intech F-16 is a rather clumsy affair (donating the fin and the fuselage flanks) and that no part from the Mastercraft MiG-21 matches with another one! Lots of improvisation and mods were necessary.

On the other side, the F-16 parts were just glued onto the MiG-21 fuselage and blended into one with putty (in several layers, though).

The fin was taken wholesale from the F-16, but clipped by about 5mm at the top. I originally wanted to use F-16 wings with wing tip launch rails and the stabilizers, too, but when I held them to the model it looked wacky - so I reverted to the Fishbed parts. The stabilizers were taken OOB, but the wing span was reduced at the roots, so that the original MiG-21 wing span was retained. Only the landing gear wells had to be adapted accordingly, but that was easier than expected and the result looks very organic.

With more wing area, I added a third pair of hardpoints under the wing roots, and I kept the gun under the cockpit in the LERX. That offered room inside of the fuselage, filled by a laser rangefinder in a canoe fairing where the original gun used to be.

On the tail, a new jet nozzle was mounted, on the fuselage some air scoops and antennae were added an an IR sensor on the nose. A new seat was used in the cockpit instead of the poor L-shaped OOB thing. The PL-2 & -11 ordnance consists of simple AIM-9Bs and slightly modified AIM-120, plus some launch rails from the scrap box.

Paintings and markings:

Modern Chinese military aircraft are hardly benchmarks for creative paint schemes - and the only "realistic" option in this case would have been a uniform grey livery. The original J-7C PLAAF night fighters carried a high contrast sand/dark green/light blue livery, similar to the MiG-21 export scheme (a.k.a. "Pumpkin"), but I found the latter not suitabel for a naval operator.

I eventually found a compromise, using one of the J-7C schemes as pattern but using grey tones instead - still not very colorful, but the "clover" patterns would help disrupt the aircraft's outlines and support the modern look and feel of this whif.

Basic colors are Humbrol 140 (Dark Gull Grey, FS 36231) and 165 (RAF Medium Sea Grey) from above, plus 122 (IAF Pale Blue, FS 35622) on the undersides. With the dark grey pattern placed with no direct connection to the Pale Blue undersides, there's even a blending effect between the tones - not spectacular, but IMHO effective.

The cockpit interior became pale teal (a mix of Soviet Cockpit Blue and white), while the landing gear wells were painted with a mix of Humbrol 56, 119 and 225 - for a yellow-ish, dull metallic brown. The wheel discs became bright green (Humbrol 131), and any di-electric panel and the radome became deep green (Humbrol 2).

The decals come from a Begemot MiG-21 sheet (roundels), while the tactical 5-digit code comes from an Airfix 1:72 B-17 sheet. The yellow code is a bit unusual, as well as its place on the fin, but both occur on Chinese fighters.

The code itself is based on the information published in the 2010 book “Chinese Air Power” by Yefim Gordon und Dmitriy Komissarov, where the Chinese code system is explained – I hope that it is more or less authentic.

The kit received a light black ink wash and some dry painting with lighter blue-grey shades, but no weathering, since modern Chinese aircraft tend to look pretty clean and pristine. Since the kits both did not feature much surface details, and a lot of the few OOB details got lost during the PSR process for the BWB wing sections, I painted some details and panel lines with a soft pencil - a compromise, though. Finally, the kit was sealed with matt acrylic varnish.

The result is a pretty subtle whif, and with the F-16 parts added the result even looks very conclusive! From above, the extra fuselage width makes the Fishbed look very massive, which is underlined by the extended stabilizer span. But I think that retailing the original MiG-21 delta wing was a good decision, because it helps retaining the Fishbed's "fast" look.

I am just not 100% happy with the finish - but for the crappy kits I used as basis it's O.K.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the model, the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

Some background:

After the division of Czechoslovakia by Germany in 1939, Slovakia was left with a small air force composed primarily of Czechoslovak combat aircraft. This force defended Slovakia against Hungary in March 1939, in the Slovak–Hungarian War in March 1939 in which Hungary reoccupied Carpathian Ruthenia and parts of southern Slovakia. In this the SVZ suffered some losses against Royal Hungarian Air Force. Later, the SVZ also took part in the German Invasion of Poland. The SVZ took part in Axis offensives in the Ukraine and Russian Central front sectors of the Eastern Front under the lead of Luftwaffe in the Stalingrad and Caucasus operations. This engagement resulted in great losses of aircraft and personnel, though.

Since Hs 123 production had already stopped in 1940 and all tools had been destroyed, the permanent attritions could not be replaced - due to a lack of serviceable airframes and spare parts the type’s numbers dwindled. When Romania and the Soviet Union entered Slovakia, they organized with some captured aircraft and defectors a local Insurgent Air Force to continue the fight against Axis forces in country, including the last operational Slovak Hs 123s. No aircraft survived the war.

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 8.33 m (27 ft 4 in)

Wingspan: 10.5 m (34 ft 5 in)

Height: 3.2 m (10 ft 6 in)

Wing area: 24.85 m² (267.5 sq ft)

Empty weight: 1,500 kg (3,307 lb)

Gross weight: 2,215 kg (4,883 lb)

Powerplant:

1× BMW 132Dc 9-cylinder air-cooled radial piston engine with 660 kW (880 hp),

driving a 2-bladed metal variable-pitch propeller

Performance:

Maximum speed: 341 km/h (212 mph, 184 kn) at 1,200 m (3,937 ft)

Range: 860 km (530 mi, 460 nmi) with a 100 l drop tank

Combat range: 480 km (300 mi, 260 nmi) with 200 kg (440.9 lb) of bombs

Service ceiling: 9,000 m (30,000 ft)

Rate of climb: 15 m/s (3,000 ft/min)

Armament:

2× 7.92 mm MG 17 machine guns, 400 rpg

Up to 450 kg (992.1 lb) of bombs under fuselage and wings

The kit and its assembly:

A relatively simple what-if project, and it took a while to figure out something to do with a surplus Airfix Hs 123 A kit in The Stash™ without a proper plan yet. The Hs 123 is an overlooked aircraft, and the fact that all airframes were used during WWII until none was left makes a story in Continental Europe a bit difficult. I also did not want to create a German aircraft – Finland was an early favorite, because I wanted to add a ski landing gear (see below), but since I won’t build anything with a swastika on it this option was a dead end. Then I considered an operator from the Balkans, e. g. Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia or Slovakia – and eventually settled for the latter because of the national markings.

The kit was built almost OOB, and the Airfix Hs 123 is a nice offering. Yes, it’s a simple kit, but its is IMHO a very good representation, despite the many rivets on the hull, a rather bleak interior and some sinkholes (e. g. on the massive outer wings struts). It goes together well, just a little PSR here and there. I just added a dashboard (scratched from styrene sheet) and modified the OOB 50 kg bombs with extended impact fuzes with a flat, round plate at the tip, so that the bomb itself explodes above soft ground or snow for a bigger blast radius.

The only major modification is a transplanted ski landing gear from a PM Model (Finnish) Fokker D.XXI, which had to be reduced in length to fit under the compact Hs 123. A small tail ski/skid was scratched from styrene sheet material.

Thankfully, the Hs 123 only calls for little rigging – just between the central upper wing supports and there is a characteristic “triangle” wiring in the cowling. All these, together with the wire antenna, were created with heated sprue material.

Painting and markings:

Finland had been a favorite because I would have been able to apply a more interesting paint scheme than the standard Luftwaffe RLM 70/71/65 splinter scheme with a low waterline that was typical for the Hs 123 during WWII. However, as a former Luftwaffe aircraft I retained this livery but decided to add a winter camouflage as a suitable thematic supplement to the skis.

The basic colors became Humbrol 65 underneath and 30 and 75 from above – the latter for a stronger contrast to the Dunkelgrün than Humbrol 91 (Schwarzgrün). Thanks to the additional whitewash mottles, which were inspired by a similar livery seen on a contemporary Bulgarian Avia B.534, I did not have to be too exact with the splinter camouflage.

The cockpit and cowling interior were painted with RLM 02 (Humbrol 240), the propeller blades became Schwarzgrün (Humbrol 91, further darkened with some black) and the bombs were painted in a dark grey (Revell 77) while the small 100 l drop tank became bare aluminum (Revell 99).

However, before the white mottles could be added, the kit received its decals so that they could be painted around the markings, just as in real life. The Slovak national markings had to be scratched, and I used standard white simplified German Balkenkreuze over a cross made from blue decal stripes. Later a separate red decal circle was placed on top of that. The only other markings are the red “7” codes, edged in white for better contrast (from a Heller Bf 109 K) and the fuel information triangles on the fuselage from the Hs 123’s OOB sheet. As an ID marking for an Eastern Front Axis aircraft, I retained the wide yellow fuselage stripe from the OOB, sheet, too, and added yellow tips on the upper wings’ undersides.

The whitewash camouflage was then created with white acrylic paint (Revell 05), applied with a soft brush with a rounded tip. Once this had dried, I treated the surfaces with fine wet sandpaper for a weathered/worn look.

Finally, after some soot stains behind the exhausts and around the machine gun nozzles, the kit was sealed with matt acrylic varnish and the rigging (see above) was done.

The Hs 123 might not be the sexiest aircraft of WWII, but I like this rugged pug which could not be replaced by its successor, the Ju 87, and served in its close support role until literally no aircraft was left. Putting one on skis worked quite well, and the exotic Slovak markings add a special touch – even though the national markings almost disappear among the disruptive whitewash camouflage! The result looks quite plausible, though, and the old Airfix kit is IMHO really underestimated.

Blogged: claireysews.blogspot.com/2011/11/pitter-patter-of-tiny-fe...

I reduced the hat to 90% to fit a 2 month old.

#AbFav_BRIDGES_ 🌉

The Humber Bridge is a 2.22 km (2,430 yd; 7,300 ft; 1.38 mi) single-span road suspension bridge near Kingston upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, England.

When it opened to traffic on 24 June 1981, it was the longest of its type in the world; the Akashi Kaikyō Bridge surpassed it in 1998, and so, is now the twelfth-longest.

The bridge spans the Humber (an estuary formed by the rivers Trent and Ouse), between Barton-upon-Humber on the south bank and Hessle on the north bank, connecting the East Riding of Yorkshire with North Lincolnshire.

Both sides of the bridge were in the non-metropolitan county of Humberside until its dissolution in 1996.

The bridge can be seen for miles around, from as far as Patrington in the East Riding of Yorkshire, and from out to sea miles off the coast.

It is a Grade I listed building.

By 2006, the bridge carried an average of 120,000 vehicles per week.

Cable spinning took place between September 1977 and July 1979.

Each cable weighs 5,500 t (5,400 long tons), with 37 strands of 404 lengths of cable.

The cable on the northern span has four extra strands.

Each cable can take a load of 19,400 t (19,100 long tons).

Have a glorious day and thank you, M, (*_*)

For more: www.indigo2photography.com

IT IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN (BY LAW!!!) TO USE ANY OF MY image or TEXT on websites, blogs or any other media without my explicit permission. © All rights reserved

Bridge, Humber, Hull, Yorkshire, river, blue, cables, mist, morning, sky, colourful, "Nikon D7200", colour, vertical, "Magda indigo"

Voici un marteau avec quelques options intéressantes :

Ce montage permet de prendre des photos avec un grossissement équivalent à environ 3X.

Il y a 2 lentilles sur cet appareil, l'une derrière l'autre.

La lentille qui se trouve à l'avant (celle qui est la plus proche du sujet) est appelée la lentille dioptre. Il s'agit ici d'une Nikkor 50mm f1.8. Cette lentille est montée à l'envers, notez que l'arrière de la lentille fait face au sujet. Pour monter cette lentille à l'envers, on utilise une bague adaptatrice (52mm-52mm pour ce cas) sur une autre lentille.

La lentille qui est à l'arrière est une Nikkor 105mm f2.5.

Le grossissement d'un tel montage est calculé par cette formule simple :

[longueur focale de la lentille à l'arrière] / [longueur focale de la lentille dioptre]

Ici nous avons : 105mm / 50mm ~ 2.1X

Pour grossir davantage, on peut soit :

- mettre une lentille dioptre avec une longueur focale plus petite,

- mettre une lentille arrière avec une longueur focale plus grande

- ajouter une bague d'allonge entre la caméra et la lentille arrière.

Dans un montage de la sorte, le foyer (focus) est quasi-fixe et très difficile à contrôler. On met au foyer en variant la distance entre l'appareil photo et le sujet. Une plaque d'ajustement micrométrique (Manfrotto 454) permet de faire le foyer sans tout le temps déplacer l'appareil et son trépied.

Vu le grossissement, les vibrations sont critiques. Même le mouvement du miroir de la caméra crée assez de mouvement pour affecter l'image à certains temps de pose.

Ehhh et en passant, ce genre de montage est vraiment inutilisable pour les sujets mobiles !

Ahh la macro photo :-)

The town centre of Sluis turned into a big fashion show. A 2 km long red carpet on the streets and 100 models

Still from CCS: a 2 degree solution, a film by Carbon Visuals for WBCSD available here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=RejAjfRkVuc

In this scene we see one day's carbon dioxide emissions (107 million metric tons) in a huge pile 4,242 metres high (2.6 miles).

The film reveals how significant fossil fuel use is today, and will continue to be for decades to come and so makes a case for carbon capture and storage. All the quantities represented in the film are 'real'; the film shows the actual volume and rate of emissions, it is not merely indicative.

The world gets through a lot of fossil fuels:

• 7,896.4 million metric tons of coal in 2013 (21.6 million metric tons per day, 250 metric tons per second)

• 91,330,895 barrels of oil per day in 2013 (168 m3 per second)

• 3,347.63 billion m3 of natural gas in 2013 (9.2 km3 per day, 106,082 m3 per second)

This film tries to make those numbers physically meaningful – to make the quantities ‘real’; more than ‘just numbers’. All the graphics in the film are based on real quantities.

• The coal we use each day would form a pile 236 metres high and 673 metres across. We could fill a volume the size of the UN Secretariat Building with coal every 17 minutes.

• At the rate we use oil, we could fill an Olympic swimming pool every 15 seconds. We could fill a volume the size of the UN Secretariat Building with oil every 30 minutes.

• The rate at which we use natural gas is equivalent to gas travelling along a pipe with an internal diameter of 60 metres at hurricane speeds (135 km/h / 84 mph). We could fill a volume the size of the UN Secretariat Building with natural gas in under 3 seconds. We use a cubic kilometre of gas every 2 hours 37 minutes and a cubic mile of the stuff every 10 hours 54 minutes.

The world’s use of fossil fuels is increasing, not decreasing. Renewable energy will help, but it cannot keep up with the demand for energy. The International Renewable Energy Agency’s most optimistic road-map suggests that renewables will not displace fossil fuels for decades, which is a problem because we are adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere at an increasing rate.

• In 2012 we added over 39 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. That’s 1,237 metric tons a second. It is like a ‘bubble’ of carbon dioxide gas 108 metres across entering the atmosphere every second of every day. We could fill a volume the size of the UN Secretariat Building with our carbon dioxide emissions in less than half a second. We could fill it 133 times a minute. The pile of one metric ton spheres in the film, which represents one day’s emissions, is 3.7 km high (2.3 miles) and 7.4 km across (4.6 miles).

To keep global warming below 2 °C we can afford to emit no more than 1 trillion metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere (3.66 trillion metric tons of carbon dioxide).

2 °C is a significant figure because if warming is more than this ‘positive feedback’ effects will make it increasingly hard to control the temperature. For instance, beyond 2 °C, there will be considerably less ice on Earth. Because it is white, ice reflects energy from the sun back out to space. If the ice goes, more energy from the sun will be absorbed by the Earth.

We have already added more than half the threshold quantity of 1 trillion metric tons of carbon (up to mid-2014, we have emitted about 582 billion metric tons). If carbon dioxide from fossil fuels continues to enter the atmosphere we will reach 2 °C threshold in a few years. The projected emissions illustrated in the film are based on RCP 4.5, which is one of the four ‘Representative Concentration Pathways’ used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report.

Carbon capture and storage means we can use the energy of fossil fuels without adding carbon to the atmosphere. Because fossil fuels will remain a significant part of the world’s energy economy for decades to come, carbon capture and storage is an essential part of any plan to keep global warming below 2 °C.

Details, calculations and sources for all the numbers in the film are available in a methodology document: www.carbonvisuals.com/media/item/735/559/Methodology-CCS_...

Animation by A-Productions

1. Tiny rose in many petals, 2. nativity, 3. snowman, 4. One So Different,But Beautiful, 5. night clouds..............., 6. Snowman, 7. So Scrumptious, 8. Mandatory undressing, 9. Reflections in my pond, 10. quarter horses, 11. indecisive weather, 12. pelle, 13. Loving mummy gorilla, 14. 9-11 memorial Lake Charles LA, 15. Squire's Castle - HDR, 16. Suspended in Time, 17. New Blog Header, 18. Mrs Brimby, 19. 30 Days of Christmas...Frosty, 20. Damselfly, 21. Eve's, 22. Candy, 23. Back to your Inner Light!!! / Retour à votre Lumière intérieure!!! :))), 24. Birch at the shore, 25. Love at Christmastime, 26. Canadian Lynx, 27. Merry Christmas to All, 28. Raining Roses, 29. Hold on Tight ..., 30. AutumnAsterAmbience, 31. MoonDance, 32. quiet little place, 33. Agapanthus Buds, 34. Pink Macro, 35. A Dahlia From The Water Garden, 36. Red & White Rose

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

Taken at Latitude/Longitude:51.516701/-0.146818. 0.40 km West Oxford Circus England United Kingdom (Map link)

2 Veneti, Wigmore Street.

Il y a 2 roches percées au dessus du Lac de la Muzelle : la première, qui est indiquée sur les cartes et sous laquelle passe le sentier (ici) , et la 2e qui était sur les précédentes photos, et qu'on voit ici au travers de la 1ere (mais on ne voit pas le trou, qui est dans un plan perpendiculaire)!

Avec le sommet et le glacier de la Muzelle à droite

Took a 2 week trip to Costa Rica. This is the start at the Heliconias Lodge and Preserve. Even in the dry season it rained all three days in the Rain Forest. I guess thats why its called a rain forest. The trail through the preserve had 3 hanging bridges which were high up. Which to me made it a lot of fun. It put you right in the trees. I was hoping to see some wildlife but few were to be seen. You could hear the Howler Monkeys one evening near by. None the less the area was beautiful. Much more to come

We took a 2.5 hour trip on the Skunk Train. It stopped in Northspur to get more water and turn around. During this 50 minute stop, we had lunch. The return trip wasn't as exciting. In total, the trip was 5 hours.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

1. Medallion January 2012, 2. Log Cabin Quilt, 3. Birds of a Feather ~ Quilt, 4. A Dash of Fancy mini - full frontal, 5. wonky churn dash, 6. Wonky stars in aqua, 7. quilting studio, 8. flying geese at 3 levels, 9. Quilt 16 (3), 10. DQS11 Sweet Dreams Quilt - back - made for me by Karen (karensc0sm0s), 11. Johnny inspects the completed top, 12. planning and playing, 13. I didn't make this quilt! My mom did., 14. Dress Circle Quilt , 15. Thangles 1, 16. Gypsy Kisses

Created with fd's Flickr Toys

some of my fave designers are denyse schmidt and pam kitty morning. i think i like the retro feel and the colors especially of pamkittymorning. love the quilts of red pepper quilts, be mused, and film in the fridge just to name a few. i like the colors red green pink and yellow and that periwinkleish blue. am tired of aqua and red but love fuschia and robins egg blue.

i love RED, and would adore for it to be used as my background solid or as a punch of color

i do NOT care for black with rainbow colors, but like it used as an accent

#5, #10 and #13 are not my color taste, but i love the quilt designs

love the heath as background on #3 and the stripes in #7

here is a link to my quilting inspiration board on pinterest pinterest.com/iamchickenfoot/quilty-inspiration/

Topsy Turvy Teapot for my mom's birthday. Her kitchen is all red white, and a myriad of teapots are amongst the things she has decorating the room. Chocolate Caramel cake with pecan praline filling and icing.

1. A freshly baked batch of magnets, 2. Fantastic Find, 3. Listen To My Heart Beat Blog, 4. "Nevermore" 15"X 24", 5. Thor Chair Back, 6. Atomic Wheelies (low calorie version) Lin's DWB Piece, 7. Thor Chair Back Detail, 8. THOR'S CHAIR, 9. Seat Final , 10. Summer Night, 11. The Dreamcatchers (please bless me with sleep ...), 12. New York City Final, 13. "Peace, Love and Daisies" Project Peace for Hopes Door, 14. Grows and grows..., 15. So Lucky, 16. Color Chunk Buckle, 17. I've got a new bag!, 18. Flair Buckle, 19. Night Daisies, 20. For Vollis Simpson, 21. Peace for Jayne, 22. Thor and His Chair, 23. Printing Tile, 24. Working Small, 25. High Desert, 26. Our Love Grows and Grows..., 27. BRAvo Auction, 28. Scrap Hearts, 29. Online Auction and Live Auction, 30. Podcast: Telluride Inside and Out, 31. Blue Buckle, 32. Feather, 33. (YET) Another Flower Pot, 34. Dreaming the Dream, 35. The Flower War, 36. Carico Lake Visitor

Created with fd's Flickr Toys

Image source: Queensland State Archives Item ID ITM1102501 Expo 88 opening day crowds outside the Australia Pavilion, Brisbane.

World Expositions (or Exhibitions) become increasingly popular after the 1851 Great Exhibition in London, but their frequency, and the standard of their facilities, was not regulated until after the 1928 Paris Convention on International Expositions. The Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) was established in 1931 to administer the Convention. Under BIE rules there are two types of international exposition: the Universal/Category A/General Exposition, and the International/Category B/Special Exposition. The former involves broad themes, and participants design their own pavilions from the ground up, based on the theme.

The International Exposition, which has a narrower theme, is much cheaper to host, and is usually limited to one branch of human endeavour. Participants rent prefabricated pavilions from the host country's committee. Brisbane's Expo 88 was an International Exposition, with the theme "Leisure in the Age of Technology". Most of the structures built on exposition sites are intended to be temporary, but some sites have become parks, incorporating surviving exposition elements, including the sites of Montreal 1967, Seville 1992, Taejon 1993, and Lisbon 1998. Some structures have gone on to become landmarks in their own right, such as the Royal Exhibition Building (Melbourne 1880), the Eiffel Tower (Paris 1889), and the Space Needle (Seattle 1962).

The first bid to bring an exposition to Brisbane in 1988 began with James Maccormick , the architect who had designed the Australian pavilions at Montreal 1967, Osaka 1970, and Spokane 1974. The Brisbane Chamber of Commerce was converted to the idea, and lobbied the Queensland State Government during 1977. However, the Queensland Government was worried about the cost of a Universal Exposition, and was preoccupied with its bid for the 1982 Commonwealth Games. A second Queensland bid was made in 1981. The Australian Bicentennial Authority (ABA), under John Reid, wanted an Universal Exposition in Australia as part of Bicentennial in 1988, and the Federal Government was prepared to fund half of the cost of an exposition in Melbourne or Sydney. However, when these states turned the offer down in January 1981, Reid approached the Queensland Government with a proposal for a cheaper International Exposition. In late 1981 the State Cabinet funded a study that identified South Brisbane as the preferred site. The State Cabinet approved the study on 5 November 1981, on the condition that the Federal Government share the capital costs, but Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser rejected this notion in December 1981.

Queensland made two more attempts in 1982 for an International Exposition. Frank Moore, Chairman of the Queensland Tourist and Travel Corporation (QTTC), believed that private enterprise could fund the exposition, and that it would benefit Queensland's tourism. Queensland's Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen asked Prime Minister Fraser to get the BIE to keep a slot open for Brisbane in 1988. Fraser was willing to support this proposal, so long as there was no Federal financial commitment. However, Queensland private enterprise was not forthcoming, and Bjelke-Petersen withdrew the proposal in April 1982. November of 1982 witnessed a renewed bid by the State Government. The State would lend money to a statutory authority, which would be tasked with buying and developing the land, and managing the exposition. Brisbane's application was sent to the December 1982 meeting of the BIE in Paris, and was approved in June 1983.

The Brisbane Exposition and South Bank Redevelopment Authority (BESBRA) was established in February 1984 by an Act of the Queensland Parliament. BESBRA was soon referred to in the media as the Expo 88 Authority, or the Expo Authority. Sir Llewellyn Edwards, the Deputy Premier, was appointed as Chairman. In April 1984 the Expo 88 Authority's general manager, Bob Minnikin, claimed that Expo 88 would require $180 million to produce, including resumptions and development, and $90 million to run. It was hoped that gate takings and sponsorship would cover the running costs, and that the development cost would be recouped through selling off the site after Expo 88. Only 13 hectares of the Expo 88 site was private land, with the remainder of the 40 hectares belonging to either the State Government or the Brisbane City Council. Nonetheless, the last resumption did not occur until October 1984, as the owner of the heritage-listed residence 'Collins Place' fought a running legal battle with the Expo 88 Authority.

Grey and Stanley Streets were closed to traffic in July 1985, and demolition work began. Construction of the pavilions started in January 1986. The concept of the Expo 88 architects, Bligh Maccormick 88, included eight large shade-canopies, to protect the public from the Queensland sun. Landscaping began in March 1987, and the Monorail, which would circle the site on a 2.3 kilometre long track, was commissioned in June of that year. By January 1988, $90 million of the $136.8 million construction budget had been spent, and 7.8 million visitors were expected.

During 1987 developers had been asked to present their proposals for Southbank's redevelopment after Expo 88. In February 1988 the State Government announced that the redevelopment plan of the River City 2000 Consortium had been accepted. The Consortium, headed by Sir Frank Moore of the QTTC, had visions of a World Trade Centre on an island, and a casino. However, by early 1988 there was a growing call in the media for more of the site to be turned into public parkland. During March and April 1988 the National Trust protested the River City 2000 Consortium's scheme to move Collins Place, the Plough Inn, and the Allgas Building, three heritage listed buildings, to a historic village. Premier Mike Ahern eventually gave reassurances that this would not happen.

Expo 88 ran for seven days a week, between the hours of 10am-10pm, for six months. Between its opening on 30 April, attended by Queen Elizabeth II, and 30 October 1988, the Expo attracted 15,760,447 visitors, the majority of these being Australians. Most of the international visitors were Japanese, but 100,000 came from the United Kingdom and Europe, with 150,000 visitors from the United States. A total of 36 nations, two international organisations, 14 state and regional governments, and 34 corporations had exhibits.

The pavilions were mostly plain, modular, and temporary. However, the Nepalese Peace Pagoda is a distinctive building, and was easily noticed as the public came through the Vulture Street entrance to Expo 88. The Association to Preserve Asian Culture (APAC) commissioned the Peace Pagoda, which was built by 160 craftsmen of the Kathmandu Valley over two years, before being assembled in Brisbane. It is one of only three such temples outside Nepal, the others being at Munich and Osaka. Nepal has a long history of intricate woodcarving on buildings, and the Peace Pagoda was an attempt to showcase this skill to the world. The two small timber pavilions in front of the Peace Pagoda sold yoghurt lati, samosas, orange juice and lemon tea. Artisans demonstrated their crafts inside the ground floor of the Pagoda, and people could drink their tea and watch the Expo crowds from the teahouse on the first floor. The nearby Nepalese pavilion showcased traditional costumes, climbing dress, photographs, and artefacts.

Expo 88 was a turning point for Queensland's culture and economy, especially in Brisbane. On 30 May 1983 Joh Bjelke-Petersen had noted that if Brisbane's bid were successful, it would focus the world's spotlight on Queensland. Sir Frank Moore believed that the key to developing a major tourist industry in Queensland was a series of hallmark events, including the 1982 Commonwealth Games, which would focus attention on Queensland far better than any advertising campaign. Expo 88 was also intended to start Brisbane on a modernisation process, and towards becoming a 'global' city. The urban renewal of South Brisbane was just one aspect. In April 1984 Sir Llew stated that Queensland would never be the same again after Expo 88, and Brisbane would develop an image as a centre of trade, culture and entertainment. In April 1988 the Courier Mail claimed that Expo 88 was "bridging the yawning gap from a hayseed State to an urbane, international future". Sir Llew also claimed in April 1988 that the aim was for Expo 88 to be a catalyst for a change in lifestyle. Queenslanders had experienced extended opening hours and outdoor café dining, and had liked it.

While the crowds enjoyed Expo 88, controversy continued regarding future plans for the site. There were calls for more public input on redevelopment plans. About 4.5 hectares of land between Stanley Street and the river belonged to the Brisbane City Council (BCC), as Clem Jones Park, and had been lent to the Expo 88 Authority. In June 1988 it was decided to restore this land as parkland, and the River City 2000 Consortium lost its Preferred Developer status.

Government plans for a South Bank Development Corporation were announced, and in July 1988 an interim committee, headed by Sir Llew, was formed to oversee redevelopment. Sir Llew noted in October 1988 that more public funding was necessary to increase the parkland component of the new Southbank, as the land had been earmarked for development to repay for the cost of Expo 88. The draft redevelopment plans released in November 1988 included 12 hectares of parkland. Public submissions on the plan suggested that people wanted to be able to return to the Expo 88 site, to a public facility that had a similar combination of food, art and nature.

At the end of Expo 88, the APAC had planned to sell the Nepalese Peace Pagoda, and it appeared likely that it would be moved to Japan. However, 90,000 people had signed a petition during Expo 88 to keep the Peace Pagoda in Brisbane, and in late 1988 the BCC offered to provide land for the Peace Pagoda, if the Federal Government would pay for its cost and maintenance. A "Save the Pagoda Campaign" was active by February 1989. Public donations eventually totalled $52,000, with $30,000 coming from one couple, who wanted to "give Brisbane something to remember from Expo 88". The BCC provided $50,000, and the Federal Government supplied $100,000. "The Friends of the Pagoda Committee" also raised funds to buy several items that had complemented the Peace Pagoda, including a brass statue of the deity of compassion, a bronze bell and carved stone frame, and a stone lingam.

The Southbank Development Corporation was set up February 1989, with Vic Pullar as the Chairman. Approximately $200 million had been spent on developing the Expo site, and this money had to be recouped. The South Bank Corporation Act was passed in May 1989, and the former Clem Jones Park area was transferred to the Southbank Corporation, which was tasked with managing a new parkland precinct. In June 1989 submissions were sought from five architectural firms, and in August the "Media Five" concept of a mixed residential, commercial, and parkland development was chosen. Under Media Five's plans, the Peace Pagoda would be moved to the northern part of the parklands. The Media Five Chairman, Desmond Brooks, also suggested that Collins Place, the Plough Inn and the Allgas Building be removed to a historic village, but Vic Pullar rejected this idea. However, when the Southbank Corporation's Draft Development Plan was released in November 1989, it proposed to only keep the facades of the historic buildings. After protests by the National Trust, the State Government overruled the Southbank Corporation.

The proposed redevelopment included a waterway through the park, and a large lagoon, which was later downsized. In March 1990 the Final Plan was presented, after public submissions, and site redevelopment started in July 1990. The official Southbank Parklands opening occurred on 20 June 1992. The Waterway was later filled in and replaced with the Energex Arbour, which was officially opened in March 2000.

The transfer of the Peace Pagoda to its current site started on 24 September 1991. The deity of compassion was moved from the first floor to a glass case on the ground floor, the sides of the ground floor were encased in glass, and a display case was added inside. Access to the first floor was sealed off. The two smaller pavilions were also transferred, but their service windows were locked up. Two lion statues and two elephant statues were also relocated. The building was originally designed to be demountable, but it is currently set in a ceramic tiled floor. The Peace Pagoda was one of the best-loved exhibits at Expo 88, as visitors were able to relax in it away from the bustle of the crowds. Today it is still popular, both with tourists, and those who go there to meditate and reflect.

Despite late entrants into the Exposition due to domestic political measures, World Expo 88 attracted some 100 pavilions, from 52 governments, of which 36 were from international-level, and numerous corporate participants. Major western and European nations were represented such as the United States, the Soviet Union (last representation at a World Exposition), France, West Germany (also last representation at a World Exposition), the United Kingdom, Canada, Spain and Greece, as well as major Asian countries such as Singapore, Thailand, Nepal, Pakistan, China, Japan, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Indonesia, and the Philippines, and amongst others. Close neighbouring countries, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea were also represented.

State-level and multi-lateral organisations included the six Australian states, the United Nations, the European Union, Vatican City, three American states (Hawaii, California and Alaska), one Japanese prefecture (sister state of Queensland, Saitama Prefecture), and one Japanese city (Brisbane's sister city Kobe City).

Corporate pavilions included IBM, Ford, Fujitsu, Queensland Newspapers, Australia Post, Cadbury Chocolate, Suncorp, and the Queensland Teachers Credit Union. NASA and Universal Studios hosted outdoor exhibits, with models of the space shuttle and Apollo program, as well as the car KITT from the TV series Knight Rider. Also having its own pavilion was the official Australian TV partner of the Expo, Network Ten, via its Queensland station TVQ, whose news studios were located there for public tours and during the Expo also switched channel frequencies in September (from channel 0 to channel 10) in line with the other state channels.

The most expensive pavilion was Japan (A$26 million), followed by the Queensland Pavilion (A$20 million) and the Australia Pavilion (A$18 million). The largest Pavilions were also Queensland,[6] followed by Australia then Japan.

High Definition TV received its Australian premiere at the Japan Pavilion, and the text-based Internet at the Swiss Pavilion. At the University pavilion the world's longest lab experiment was on display. The pitch drop experiment, which features tar pitch slowly dripping through a funnel at a rate of nine drops in 81 years, actually made an unseen drop while on display.

1. a wish come true, 2. button hole stich books, 3. the 25 stones of christmas, 4. Winterlandscape, 5. Pebbles shells and candles, 6. Amelia (detail), 7. Christmas 09, 8. bob bob bobbin' along, 9. Hiver Hibiscus, 10. Untitled, 11. green winter, 12. mitts, 13. love what is real, 14. let it snow 4, 15. Embroidery Brooch, 16. presépio, 17. Night forest, 18. post struggle, 19. Untitled, 20. Christmas Angel - detail, 21. "A Serious Matter", 22. Señor, 23. Untitled, 24. river II, 25. SDC11328, 26. cirkels, 27. millicent, 28. perched in the soul, 29. Untitled, 30. Circle and circle, 31. Brooch, 32. 6, 33. Untitled, 34. Oh, 35. Untitled, 36. eco print with oak leaves

Created with fd's Flickr Toys

Still from CCS: a 2 degree solution, a film by Carbon Visuals for WBCSD available here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=RejAjfRkVuc

In this scene we see the quantity of carbon dioxide human activity added to the atmosphere every day in 2012.

The film reveals how significant fossil fuel use is today, and will continue to be for decades to come and so makes a case for carbon capture and storage. All the quantities represented in the film are 'real'; the film shows the actual volume and rate of emissions, it is not merely indicative.

The world gets through a lot of fossil fuels:

• 7,896.4 million metric tons of coal in 2013 (21.6 million metric tons per day, 250 metric tons per second)

• 91,330,895 barrels of oil per day in 2013 (168 m3 per second)

• 3,347.63 billion m3 of natural gas in 2013 (9.2 km3 per day, 106,082 m3 per second)

This film tries to make those numbers physically meaningful – to make the quantities ‘real’; more than ‘just numbers’. All the graphics in the film are based on real quantities.

• The coal we use each day would form a pile 236 metres high and 673 metres across. We could fill a volume the size of the UN Secretariat Building with coal every 17 minutes.

• At the rate we use oil, we could fill an Olympic swimming pool every 15 seconds. We could fill a volume the size of the UN Secretariat Building with oil every 30 minutes.

• The rate at which we use natural gas is equivalent to gas travelling along a pipe with an internal diameter of 60 metres at hurricane speeds (135 km/h / 84 mph). We could fill a volume the size of the UN Secretariat Building with natural gas in under 3 seconds. We use a cubic kilometre of gas every 2 hours 37 minutes and a cubic mile of the stuff every 10 hours 54 minutes.

The world’s use of fossil fuels is increasing, not decreasing. Renewable energy will help, but it cannot keep up with the demand for energy. The International Renewable Energy Agency’s most optimistic road-map suggests that renewables will not displace fossil fuels for decades, which is a problem because we are adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere at an increasing rate.

• In 2012 we added over 39 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. That’s 1,237 metric tons a second. It is like a ‘bubble’ of carbon dioxide gas 108 metres across entering the atmosphere every second of every day. We could fill a volume the size of the UN Secretariat Building with our carbon dioxide emissions in less than half a second. We could fill it 133 times a minute. The pile of one metric ton spheres in the film, which represents one day’s emissions, is 3.7 km high (2.3 miles) and 7.4 km across (4.6 miles).

To keep global warming below 2 °C we can afford to emit no more than 1 trillion metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere (3.66 trillion metric tons of carbon dioxide).

2 °C is a significant figure because if warming is more than this ‘positive feedback’ effects will make it increasingly hard to control the temperature. For instance, beyond 2 °C, there will be considerably less ice on Earth. Because it is white, ice reflects energy from the sun back out to space. If the ice goes, more energy from the sun will be absorbed by the Earth.

We have already added more than half the threshold quantity of 1 trillion metric tons of carbon (up to mid-2014, we have emitted about 582 billion metric tons). If carbon dioxide from fossil fuels continues to enter the atmosphere we will reach 2 °C threshold in a few years. The projected emissions illustrated in the film are based on RCP 4.5, which is one of the four ‘Representative Concentration Pathways’ used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report.

Carbon capture and storage means we can use the energy of fossil fuels without adding carbon to the atmosphere. Because fossil fuels will remain a significant part of the world’s energy economy for decades to come, carbon capture and storage is an essential part of any plan to keep global warming below 2 °C.

Details, calculations and sources for all the numbers in the film are available in a methodology document: www.carbonvisuals.com/media/item/735/559/Methodology-CCS_...

Animation by A-Productions

BlueBrick layout.

----------

Togklodsen's exhibition at The Danish Railways Museum in the city of Odense, 9-10 November 2024.

More photos:

1) www.flickr.com/photos/198543405@N05/albums/72177720321921602

2) www.flickr.com/photos/143292500@N06/sets/72177720321880276

LE30 fashion

Two colour variants: Dust LE20 and Nude LE10

Available at emiliacouture website on Monday 14th at 11pm Paris time!

The Vertebrata gown comes in 2 different colour variations: Dust (LE20) and Nude (LE10). Dust is a 2-tone cross weave silk of powder pink and black making the fabric an elegant dusty grey with a mauve hue. The Dust silk is coarse dupioni with a raw feel to it and the trail of the gown is a matching colour soft netting. The Nude is a luxurious silk satin in toned down shade of pale powder beige. The trail of the gown is a matching colour soft netting with golden hue. The colour variation share accessories in beige leatherette: three strap pumps with golden edgy spine heels and a clutch with metal corners. The focal points of the Vertebrata gowns are the metal ornaments on the shoulders and a pale gold spine snaking down the naked back.

If you have hard time deciding which colour to go for here are some tips: both "Dust" and "Nude" do perfectly with Nnaji's usual Chocolate skin tone. If you want the gown for Inro I recommend "Dust" as "Nude" does not compliment the Peach skin tone as well.

I've got many emails asking if the gown fits other dolls and I tried it on my Numina Devon and Sybarite. The Vertebrata gown fits the small bust Numina dolls Devon and Ajuma beautifully, but is too small for Sybarites (not sure about V3 as I don't have one at hand).

Modelled by Cherub and Seraph wearing PattaArt ArtDeco wigs. Doll not included.

2016 IC CE

ROMA ARCHEOLOGICA & RESTAURO ARCHITETTURA 2020. «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. The NYT (18 Aug. 2020) & Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (13 Apr. 2020). S.v., "Raffaello architetto", in: The NYT (06 March 2020); Università di Padova (20/07/2020); Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020); Jhon Correa / Facebook (1 July 2020) & Prof. Cammy Brothers (2001). wp.me/pbMWvy-uQ

1). ROME - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. Scuderie del Quirinale (5 March - June 2020).

A monographic exhibition with over two hundred masterpieces among paintings, drawings and comparative works, dedicated to Raffaello on the 500th anniversary of his death, which took place in Rome on April 6, 1520 at the age of just 37 years old.

The exhibition, which finds inspiration particularly in the Raffaello's fundamental Roman period which consecrated him as an artist of incomparable and legendary greatness, tells his whole complex and articulated creative path with richness of detail through a vast corpus of works, for the first time exposed all together.

Many institutions involved have contributed to enrich the exhibition with masterpieces from their collections: among these, in Italy, the National Galleries of Ancient Art, the National Art Gallery of Bologna, the Museum and the Real Bosco di Capodimonte, the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, the Brescia Museums Foundation, and abroad, in addition to the Vatican Museums, the Louvre, the National Gallery of London, the Prado Museum, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Albertina in Vienna, the British Museum, the Royal Collection, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lille.

Fonte / source:

--- Scuderie del Quirinale (5 March - June 2020).

www.scuderiequirinale.it/mostra/copia-di-raffaello

2.1). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483», in: Intervento delle Scuderie del Quirinale per la maratona del MiBACT "Italia chiamò" / Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (Mar 13, 2020).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8l6q9ywLxY&t=112s

2.2). ROME - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. / English / Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (Apr. 13, 2020). www.youtube.com/watch?v=s58gYvvNrKQ&t=61s

3). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. Scuderie del Quirinale (05/03 - 02/06/2020).

Il 6 aprile 1520 muore a Roma, a trentasette anni, Raffaello Sanzio, il più grande pittore del Rinascimento. La città sembra fermarsi nella commozione e nel rimpianto, mentre la notizia della scomparsa si diffonde con incredibile rapidità in tutte le corti europee. S’interrompeva non solo un percorso artistico senza precedenti, ma anche l’ambizioso progetto di ricostruzione grafica della Roma antica, commissionato dal pontefice, che avrebbe riscattato dopo secoli di oblio e rovina la grandezza e la nobiltà della capitale dei Cesari, affermando inoltre una nuova idea di tutela. Sepolto secondo le sue ultime volontà nel Pantheon, simbolo della continuità fra diverse tradizioni di culto, forse l’esempio più emblematico dell’architettura classica, Raffaello diviene immediatamente oggetto di un processo di divinizzazione, mai veramente interrotto, che ci consegna oggi la perfezione e l’armonia della sua arte.

A distanza di cinquecento anni, questa mostra racconta la sua storia e insieme quella di tutta la cultura figurativa occidentale che l’ha considerato un modello imprescindibile. La mostra, articolata secondo un’idea originale, propone un percorso che ripercorre a ritroso l’avventura creativa di Raffaello, da Roma a Firenze, da Firenze all’Umbria, fino alla nativa Urbino. Un incalzante flash-back che consente di ripensare il percorso biografico partendo dalla sua massima espansione creativa negli anni di Leone X. Risalendo il corso della vita di Raffaello di capolavoro in capolavoro, il visitatore potrà rintracciare in filigrana la prefigurazione di quel linguaggio classico che solo a Roma, assimilata nel profondo la lezione dell’antico, si sviluppò con una pienezza che non ha precedenti nella storia dell’arte. Grazie ad un numero eccezionale di capolavori provenienti dalle maggiori raccolte italiane ed europee, la mostra organizzata dalle Scuderie del Quirinale insieme con le Gallerie degli Uffizi, costituisce un’occasione ineguagliabile per osservare da vicino le invenzioni dell’Urbinate. Il suo breve, luminoso percorso ha cambiato per sempre la storia delle arti e del gusto: Raffaello rivive nelle sale dell’esposizione che lo celebra come genio universale.

Fonte / source:

--- Scuderie del Quirinale (05/03 - 02/06/2020).

www.scuderiequirinale.it/mostra/raffaello-000

3). ROME «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. The NYT (18 Aug. 2020).

ROME - In the Virtual (and Actual) Footsteps of Raphael - In Italy and beyond, the plan was to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Renaissance artist’s death with great fanfare. Then came the pandemic, and the virtual world stepped in. The NYT (18 Aug. 2020).

______

Also see:

--- ROME - Rome Celebrates the Short, but Beautiful, Life of Raphael - Amid new coronavirus restrictions on museums in Italy, a blockbuster show traces the artistʼs life from finish to start. The NYT (06 March 2020).

www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/arts/raphael-rome-coronavirus....

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This was supposed to be the year of Raphael. Five hundred years after his death at 37, the Renaissance master was due to receive the exalted rollout reserved for artistic superstars: blockbuster museum shows in Rome and London; conferences and lectures at universities and cultural centers around the world; flag-waving and wreath-laying in his Italian hometown, Urbino. There was even the tang of controversy when the advisory committee of Florence’s Uffizi Gallery resigned en masse to protest the inclusion of a precious papal portrait in the big exhibition at Rome’s Scuderie del Quirinale. Then the coronavirus hit and Raphael’s annus mirabilis turned into the world’s annus horribilis.

When news of the handsome young artist’s death broke in Rome on April 6, 1520, Pope Leo X wept and church bells tolled all over the city.

Half a millennium later, Rome was in lockdown along with the rest of Italy as deaths from the virus spiraled. The Scuderie show, a once-in-a-lifetime gathering of more than 200 works (120 by Raphael) from all over the world, was forced to shut its doors after just three days, despite having presold a record 70,000 tickets. Raphael’s tomb in the Pantheon was supposed to be adorned with a red rose every day of 2020 to commemorate his death — but the ancient temple was also shuttered because of the virus. Lectures and conferences were canceled, postponed or moved online.

Poor Raphael. Last year, the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death came off without a hitch. Raphael’s devotees hoped that this

year’s celebrations would restore the artist’s luster, which has dimmed over the past centuries. When the world fell ill this past winter,

Raphael was one of the casualties. But all is not lost. The Scuderie show reopened on June 2 and will remain up until the end of August. The Scuderie’s president, Mario de Simoni, had expected as many as 500,000 people to see the show pre-virus, but now says the number probably won’t exceed 160,000. For those unable to attend in person, the Scuderie has released an English-language version of its excellent video, recapping the highlights of the exhibition, room by room. You’ll want to hit the pause button in Room 2 to admire two masterpieces on loan from the Louvre: a selfportrait with a friend and the portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, one of the glories of Renaissance portraiture. The close-ups of his paintings of women in Room 6 testify to the artist’s passionate appreciation of feminine beauty. Other Scuderie videos (in Italian) delve into particular aspects of his genius — for instance, the jewelry worn by his female subjects, or the literary world he moved in.

Tour guides such as Clam Tours and Joy of Rome now offer virtual journeys in which small groups can zoom around Italy in the footsteps of the artist. On Sept. 13, for example, you can join the Renaissance specialist Antonio Forcellino and other Italian art experts on Clam Tour’s virtual exploration of Raphael’s incomparable frescoes of the four sibyls at Rome’s Santa Maria della Pace church ($25). Check out Joy of Rome’s free two-minute video about Raphael’s frescoes at the Villa Farnesina to see if you’d like to sign up for a two-and-a-half hour virtual tour (prices on request).

Even on a laptop screen, Raphael’s ever-evolving craftsmanship and quicksilver brilliance are apparent. “The year of Raphael has not

been ruined, but simply modified,” said Marzia Faietti, a curator of the Scuderie show. “Since many conferences and lectures have been

put off until next year, in a sense there will be two years of Raphael.”

For Italians, a silver lining of the pandemic has been the opportunity to relish their cultural treasures without the tourist hordes. “I cried,”

said Francesca Pagliaro, founder of the Joy of Rome tour company, of the experience of standing alone in the Vatican’s recently reopened

Sala di Costantino — one of four rooms in the museum frescoed by Raphael and his students, and which you can view here. “It’s the first

time in five years that I’ve seen the Stanze without scaffolding — and I had it to myself,” Ms. Pagliaro said. “It was magical.” Americans, barred from European travel for the foreseeable future, will have to make do with all this virtual magic. Not ideal — but Raphael’s magic is powerful, subtle and enduring enough to withstand the challenge.

The spirit of Urbino

I can attest to this because back in November 2019, I had the opportunity to follow in Raphael’s actual, not virtual, footsteps in Italy. I stood

shivering in the room where he was born in Urbino in 1483. I knelt at the austere tomb in a niche inside the Pantheon where he was

interred 37 years later. I feasted my eyes not only on paintings and frescoes, but on the humble church and glorious Roman chapel that

attest to his emerging genius for architecture. My pilgrimage would be impossible today — but thanks to the wonders of the internet and

the resourcefulness of Italy’s leading cultural institutions, I can remotely retrace my steps, refresh my memories and relive the

revelations.

The first revelation came, aptly, in Urbino’s Palazzo Ducale, the magnificent Renaissance palace constructed in the late 15th century by the

humanist and warlord Federico da Montefeltro that now houses the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche. Judge the magnificence for yourself

by clicking through Google Images’ impressive photo archive. Another click puts you face to face with the museum’s sole work by Raphael

— the haunting portrait known as “La Muta” (“The Mute Woman”). As in so many of his portraits, Raphael posed this stern beauty against a solid dark background, eschewing any visual cues that would evoke a sense of place.

How, I wondered, did Urbino influence the art of its most famous son?

I posed this question to Peter Aufreiter, then director of the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, when I sat down with him in his office in the

Palazzo Ducale. Mr. Aufreiter’s response was to click on an image of Raphael’s 1507 portrait of Federico’s son, Duke Guidobaldo da

Montefeltro (now in the Uffizi), and then summon me to the window. “Look at the hillside across the valley and that house at the base of

the hill — it’s the same background Raphael put in his painting of Guidobaldo.” You can see exactly what Mr. Aufreiter meant by using the

magnify feature on this online image. Urbino’s steep green landscape, limpid light and crystalline architecture — you can also get a good sense of it here — imprinted themselves on the artist’s young mind and surface repeatedly in his work.

Even though Raphael spent most of his career in Florence and Rome, Mr. Aufreiter insists that Urbino, whose cityscape has changed little

since the Renaissance, is where you can feel his spirit most intensely.

The spirit is palpable in the artisans’ quarter surrounding the house where Raphael was born, the son of the local court painter Giovanni

Santi. Near the summit of the ski-slope-pitched Via Raffaello, just a stone’s throw from the rather pompous bronze monument of the artist

erected in 1897, the Casa Natale di Raffaello has been preserved as a museum. There’s a rather rudimentary virtual tour on its website, but

you’ll get a better feel for the interior and exterior spaces in this YouTube video. In these bare simple rooms and the deep brick courtyard

they enclose, little imagination is required to dial the scene back to Raphael’s apprenticeship in the last years of the 15th century. Giovanni

Santi’s bottega (workshop) occupied the ground floor, and the future master grew up amid the bustle of painters grinding pigments,

dabbing madonnas and trading in art supplies.

Father and son conducted a more exalted commerce at Urbino’s Palazzo Ducale. Fabricated of brick, stone and flawless geometry, this

palace was one of the glories of the Italian Renaissance — not only for its divine architecture, but for the refined elegance of the nobles

who gathered here. This video captures some facets of the palace’s perfection — the way its silhouette pierces the profile of surrounding

hills, the ideal proportions of its noble courtyard, the interplay of volume and decoration in its interior.

Baldassare Castiglione set his 1528 masterpiece, “The Book of the Courtier,” in this storied palace — and it was here that the young

Raphael polished his manners, sharpened his wit, cultivated invaluable connections and acquired a lifelong passion for classical antiquity.

Raised at court, Raphael was pursued by the powerful (Popes Julius II and Leo X), esteemed by the brilliant (Castiglione and the Urbinoborn

architect Donato Bramante were close friends) and adored by the beautiful. “Raphael was a very amorous person,” wrote Giorgio Vasari, his first biographer. It was Vasari who originated the claim that Raphael died after an overindulgence in sex with his Roman mistress, Margherita Luti. Whatever really killed him on April 6, 1520, Raphael accomplished much and rose high in his brief life — but he never ceased to be “il maestro Urbinate,” the master from Urbino.

A couch-surfing brush-for-hire.

Orphaned when his father died in 1494 (his mother had died three years earlier), Raphael spent his teenage years as an apprentice before

undertaking commissions in Umbria and Tuscany. It’s likely that he was in Florence by 1504 — not as a permanent resident but rather a

couch-surfing brush-for-hire.

Though Raphael’s footsteps in Florence are faint, there is no question that he encountered the works of both Leonardo da Vinci and

Michelangelo here — including, very likely, the Mona Lisa, which you can view here, and the marble statue of David, which you can see

and read about on the Accademia’s detailed website. Critics and connoisseurs have been measuring this Renaissance trio against each other for 500 years now. Florence’s Uffizi Gallery is the ideal place to revisit this rivalry, both in person and virtually. After a recent renovation, paintings by the big three have been put on display in two beautifully lit adjoining rooms, and you can find them on the Uffizi website.

To my eyes, neither Michelangelo nor Leonardo ever matched the sheer painterly virtuosity of the fringed white collar that Raphael stitched around the neck of the cloth merchant Agnolo Doni, or the faint dent he incised between the young businessman’s anxious brows (use the magnify function to zoom in on this image). Agnolo’s 15-year-old bride, Maddalena Strozzi, hangs beside him, posed like the Mona Lisa with bejeweled hands clasped on her lap, but clad in a kaleidoscope of watered red silk, embroidered blue damask and shimmering gauze. Across the Arno are the glories of the Pitti Palace’s Galleria Palatina — the largest collection of Raphael’s works outside the Vatican. Unlike the Uffizi, the Pitti Palace retains the ambience and layout of an aristocratic residence: Paintings are stacked three deep in gilded high-ceilinged chambers; works are arranged idiosyncratically rather than chronologically; and the lighting can be maddeningly inadequate. Luckily for remote visitors, the lighting is much better on the palace’s website, as well as in the Italian and Spanish language videos about the museum’s treasures, posted here.

To the Eternal City

Raphael was summoned to Rome in 1508 by Pope Julius II, and he remained there until his death in 1520. Those 12 final years in the

Eternal City marked the apogee of his career. Painter, architect, entrepreneur, archaeologist, pioneer printmaker, Raphael became the

prototype of the artist as celebrity — the Andy Warhol of the Renaissance.

In pre-pandemic Rome, visitors had to endure the lines and tour groups that plagued the Vatican Museums in order to spend a few crowded moments with one of Raphael’s supreme accomplishments: the four papal chambers, known as the Stanze di Raffaello, that the artist and his workshop frescoed between 1508 and 1520. These days, in-person visitors to the reopened Vatican Museums enjoy the Stanze along with the nearby Sistine Chapel in ideal conditions. But remote visits can also be rewarding, thanks to the beautifully produced videos and virtual tours now available on the Vatican’s website. With the click of a mouse, you can hop back and forth between the virtual Sistine Chapel ceiling and the Raphael Stanze and decide for yourself which is the greater masterpiece.

“Everything he had in art, he had from me,” the curmudgeonly Michelangelo once grumbled of his younger rival. When you view their

roughly contemporaneous fresco cycles one after the other (or side by side on your computer), it’s clear that Raphael did much more than

borrow. “The School of Athens,” the most celebrated work in the Stanze, has the propulsive tension of a film paused at its climactic scene.

Cast members — a mix of classical philosophers and Renaissance savants — converse, argue, scribble, read and declaim on a sprawling,

but unified, “set” framed by classical architecture. By contrast, Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling, for all its bravura, reads like a series of

static cels.

After the Vatican’s Raphael Stanze, a logical next stop, whether actually or virtually, is the Villa Farnesina, with its two beguiling frescoed

loggias — “The Triumph of Galatea” in one of the loggias and “Cupid and Psyche” in the other. Despite the name, this riverside Trastevere landmark is neither a villa nor originally a Farnese property, but rather a suburban pleasure pavilion that Agostino Chigi built for himself in the early 16th century. Chigi brought in the finest artists of the day to fresco the loggias; the result is a delightful crazy quilt of mythological scenes and astrological symbols. Raphael’s “Galatea,” with her wind-whipped tresses, elegantly torqued bare torso and dolphin-powered, scallop-shell raft, has become an icon of High Renaissance grace and wit, and you can see it and other highlights in the villa’s video archive. Even if you don’t speak Italian, the short films are worth delving into for the imagery alone.

From painting to architecture

In the last phase of his career, Raphael increasingly turned from painting to architecture. Sadly, his major architectural achievements — the grand unfinished Villa Madama perched on a wooded hill two miles north of the Vatican, and the classically inspired Raphael loggias inside the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace — were inaccessible to the public even before the pandemic, and remain so. To get a sense of Raphael’s architectural genius, make (or click) your way to the church of Santa Maria del Popolo in the piazza of the same name at the northwest edge of the historic center. Like so many transplants, Raphael fell under the spell of the Eternal City’s classical substructure: Rome itself, its layers, its ruins and relics, its ceaseless commerce with the past, became a source of inspiration. The chapel he designed for Chigi inside the Popolo church evinces just how deeply and fruitfully Raphael internalized this inspiration. At first glance, it’s just another church chapel — tight, high, adorned with art and inlaid with precious stone. But on this site you can glimpse the almost miraculous geometry of this space — the interplay of disc and dome, the rhythm set up between the vertical pleats of the Corinthian pilasters and the elongated triangles of the twin red marble pyramids that mark the Chigis' graves. Fittingly, the artist who devoted the final years of his career to measuring, cataloging, preserving and mapping Roman antiquities, was laid to rest in the greatest classical structure to survive the ages: the Pantheon. If a trip to the physical Pantheon is not in the cards, you can drop in with Tom Hanks as your guide in this clip from the film “Angels and Demons.” As for his tomb — an easy-to-miss niche with a statue of the Virgin, modest and vague, presiding over the glassed-in coffin — you can view it here.

Marzia Faietti, curator of Rome’s Scuderie show, has been struck by how the virus has enhanced Raphael’s reputation and heightened

awareness of the twin beauties of his art and character. “Young people in particular have reacted with an outpouring of enthusiasm and

benevolence which I really didn’t expect,” she said. “The pandemic has brought suffering to so many, but the year of Raphael will be

remembered more vividly, not despite the virus, but because of it.”

Fonte / source:

--- The NYT (18 Aug. 2020).

www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/travel/in-the-virtual-and-actu...

Foto / fonte / source:

--- ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483», et al., Scuderie del Quirinale / You-Tube (05/03 - 02/06/2020) (08/2020).

www.youtube.com/user/ScuderieQuirinale/videos

4.). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483»., in: "Raffaello architetto e la Lettera a Papa Leone X." Università di Padova (20/07/2020).

Artista dal talento straordinario, affermato, corteggiato, desiderato. Questo, ma non solo questo, fu Raffaello Sanzio (1483-1520): l'esperienza come architetto, lo studio e l'impegno per la tutela degli edifici antichi di Roma sono di importanza centrale nel suo percorso, a partire dalla realizzazione di opere come la Cappella Chigi e Villa Madama, fino alla stesura, insieme a Baldassarre Castiglione, della Lettera a Papa Leone X. La grande mostra Raffaello 1520-1483, allestita alle Scuderie del Quirinale di Roma, prorogata fino al 30 agosto, dedica ampio spazio alla sua appassionata attività nel campo dell'architettura.

"Sin dai primi anni di formazione, l'interesse di Raffaello per l'architettura, in particolare per quella del mondo antico, è fortemente presente - racconta il professor Zaggia al Bo Live - Fino a sfociare in un'opera fondamentale come Lo sposalizio della vergine, in cui compare un tempio a pianta centrale sullo sfondo che interpreta in modo molto chiaro le sperimentazioni del suo tempo in ambito architettonico. A questa sperimentazione dell'architettura sul piano della rappresentazione, segue poi, con il trasferimento di Raffaello a Roma tra il 1508 e il 1509 e l'incontro con Bramante, un interesse concreto rivolto alla costruzione e alla progettazione vera e propria. Da questo punto di vista, il rapporto che si instaura tra Raffaello e Bramante per lo studio dell'architettura antica, conservata all'interno della città, diventa fondamentale punto di partenza per un approfondimento che aprirà strade nuove all'architettura successiva. Con la morte di figure di riferimento, come Bramante appunto, Raffaello diventa la personalità più importante che opera nel campo dell'architettura all'interno dei grandi cantieri pontifici. Si apre così una stagione breve in cui le opere realizzate da Raffaello saranno numerose e importanti: alcune realmente costruite, altre solo progettate".

In questo contesto si inserisce la Lettera a Papa Leone X, scritta nel 1519 da Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione, il raffinato autore del Cortegiano (ai due, uniti da amicizia e stima reciproca, è dedicata una mostra al Palazzo Ducale di Urbino, dal titolo Baldassarre Castiglione e Raffaello.Volti e momenti della civiltà di corte), sul tema della tutela e dello studio degli edifici antichi. La premessa al documento è rintracciabile nei fatti avvenuti qualche anno prima: nell'estate del 1515, infatti, Leone X nomina Raffaello præfectus marmorum et lapidum omnium (dal 1514 l'Urbinate già dirigeva la fabbrica di San Pietro). La lettera dedicatoria, la cui prima edizione venne inserita all'interno delle opere di Baldassare Castiglione pubblicate a Padova nel 1733, si apre così: "Sono molti, padre santissimo, i quali misurando col loro piccolo giudizio le cose grandissime che delli romani circa l’arme, e della città di Roma circa al mirabile artificio, ai ricchi ornamenti e alla grandezza degli edifici si scrivono, quelle più presto stimano favolose che vere. Ma altrimenti a me suole avvenire; perché considerando dalle ruine, che ancor si veggono di Roma, la divinità di quegli animi antichi, non istimo fuor di ragione il credere che molte cose a noi paiono impossibili, che ad essi erano facilissime".

Nella prima parte Raffaello esalta la grandezza del passato, dichiara le proprie competenze in ambito architettonico e invita il pontefice a intervenire per garantire la tutela dei monumenti antichi, da salvare dal degrado. Nella seconda invece si concentra su questione più tecniche, introducendo anche la descrizione di uno strumento per la misurazione degli edifici antichi di sua invenzione: "Farassi adunque un instromento tondo e piano, come un astrolabio, il diametro del quale sarà due palmi o più o meno, come piace a chi vuole adoperarlo, e la circonferenza di questo istromento si partirà in otto parti giusti, e a ciascuna di quelle parti si porrà il nome d’uno degli otto venti, dividendola in trentadue altre parti picciole, che si chiameranno gradi [...] Con questo adunque misureremo ogni sorte di edificio, di che forma sia, o tondo o quadro o con istrani angoli e svoglimenti quanto dir si possa".

"L'importanza della lettera risiede nei principi enunciati all'inizio del testo, in cui Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione sostengono la necessità e l'urgenza di tutelare i monumenti antichi, per trasmetterle alle generazioni future - conclude Zaggia -. Non a caso la lettera, pubblicata alla fine del Settecento, una volta riconosciuto l'autore in Raffaello, diventa il punto di partenza per la legislazione adottata successivamente dagli Stati europei per la protezione del patrimonio artistico e culturale. Erede ultimo di questa tradizione è l'articolo 9 della nostra Costituzione".

Fonte/ source:

--- Università di Padova (20/07/2020).

ilbolive.unipd.it/it/news/raffaello-architetto-lettera-pa...

4.1). ROMA / Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020): «Raffaello 1520-1483»., "Raffaello architetto e la Lettera a Papa Leone X." S.v., Lettera a papa Leone X di Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione; in: Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020).

Nella galleria fotografica potrete scorrere la lettera di Raffaello e Baladassare Castiglione a papa Leone X. Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione, Lettera a papa Leone X, s.d. [1519]. Manoscritto cartaceo costituito da 6 carte di formato 220 x 290 mm circa, ripiegate a formare fascicoletto non rilegato di 24 facciate, di cui 21 scritte, 3 bianche. ASMn, Archivio Castiglioni (acquisto 2016), busta 2, n. 12.

Fonte / source:

--- Lettera a papa Leone X di Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione, in: Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2020).

www.archiviodistatomantova.beniculturali.it/index.php?it/...

4.2). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Raffaello a Roma è un percorso a ritroso dal 1520 al 1483. Scuderie del Quirinale (05/03 - 02/06/2020), in: Jhon Correa / Facebook (1 July 2020). www.facebook.com/jhon.correa.7549

4.3). ROMA - «Raffaello 1520-1483». Lettera a papa Leone X di Raffaello e Baldassarre Castiglione. S.v.,

Prof. Cammy Brothers, “Architecture, History, Archaeology: Drawing Ancient Rome in the Letter to Leo X & in Sixteenth-Century Practice,” in Coming About…A Festschrift for John Shearman, ed. Lars R. Jones and Louisa C. Matthew. Cambridge: Harvard University Art Museums (2001): 135–40 [in PDF].

Fonte / source:

--- Prof. Cammy Brothers / academia.edu. (2020).

neu.academia.edu/CammyBrothers

La vie d'une feuille

Un épais brouillard recouvre les paysages que je parcours depuis plusieurs semaines. Je suis perdu entre ciel et terre.

La chaleur de l’été a transformé le paysage. Les arbres se sont vêtus de leur plus beau feuillage qui filtre la lumière jusqu’au sol. Je suis couché là, dans l’herbe, regardant le temps défilé sans me soucier du lendemain. Mon attention se porte sur une feuille, elle se bat contre le vent pour rester accrochée à sa branche. Sans se préoccuper de sa propre existence, elle lutte dans l’unique but d’assurer la pérennité de son géniteur. Mais je sais que tôt ou tard elle finira par céder. Elle sera enfin libre, portée par le vent un court instant avant de se poser pour mourir. Durant ses deux cents jours d’existence, en plus de contribuer à la bonne croissance de l’arbre, cette feuille aura aussi porté assistance à une multitude d’insectes en se laissant grignoter ou en leurs offrant le gîte lors des intempéries. Moi-même en profite, son ombre rend la température agréable à l’endroit où je me prélasse. Et ce n’est pas tout, même après sa mort elle aidera encore le sol de la forêt à se fertiliser. Cette feuille aura donné sa vie pour que la vie autour d’elle puisse se perpétrer. Admiratif, j’en oublie presque le plus important. Chaque nuit, celle-ci libère de l’oxygène ! Sans elle, il n’y aurai tout simplement pas de vie sur terre! Tout à coup, j’ai eux la sensation d’être insignifiant, voir inutile en comparaison de cette feuille. Et pourtant moi aussi, sans le savoir je dois amener quelque chose autour de moi, de bénéfique pour les autres.

Je crois que c’est après cette réflexion que j’ai décidé de me lever pour poursuivre ma route.

Illustration type Speed painting - 2 heures de taf

1. dear jane x s, 2. Baby Jane, 3. Doll Quilt Swap WIP, 4. Baby Jane (detail), 5. mini Dear Jane, 6. Dear Jane: Row I Finished, 7. Batiks, 8. Dear Jane Quilting, 9. Dear Jane da Eliane no Terê, 10. Quilting on the Plain Dear Jane Triangles, 11. www.flickr.com/photos/judymack/731880190, 12. DJ Top Basted!, 13. Mommy and Aine Quilting Together, 14. D'après le modèle de Jane Stickle, 15. Dear Jane blocks, 16. Dear Jane Visits PA, 17. Jane meets Valentine, 18. Ela ..... é Ela ...a Dear Jane, 19. DEAR_JANE_PASTEL_13_ON_POINT, 20. Dear Jane Quilt, 21. Darlene Palmer's Dear Jane Quilt, 22. Dear Jane: Block Organization, 23. Picture004, 24. dj terminé, 25. Susan Read her version of Dear Jane, 26. Dear Jane: Blocks completed so far, 27. Dear jane quilt at show, 28. Dear Jane, 29. 2008 01 26 001ed, 30. Quilting supplies, 31. 1 - July 2007, 32. Dear Jane, a wonderful quilt book to read and try my hand at!, 33. Dear Jane, 34. dear jane in work, 35. Dear Jane, 36. Dear Jane

Group on Flickr: flickr.com/groups/thedearjaneproject/

More info: www.dearjane.com

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

Seen at Basingstoke Station with a 2 for Baughurst.

A 2,25-minute video of an individual preening in the 1st half and foraging (among blooming Pond Pickerel) in the 2nd half. The individual is likely an adult (the iris is noticeably red, rather than dark, when it turns its head certain angles while preening) in non-breeding plumage (no white border around the face and eyes, and facial skin between the bill and eyes is a dull color rather than bright pink). Whalon Lake, Bolingbrook, IL (Will County).

We're back at the Monaco Ballroom on Friday December 12th for the final show of 2008!! Make sure you make it to see how the year's feuds end at this season ending super show - GPW: "Christmas Crunch"

We promise we wont crunch your credit.... we'll only crunch your Christmas!!

GPW Heavyweight Title Match

Bubblegum © vs. Dirk Feelgood

Just a few months ago you'd be forgiven for taking a double take at this match. The friendship between the two former friends totally imploded with the desire to become Heavyweight champion. Refusing to accept the demise of his friendship with Dirk Feelgood, Bubblegum spent months in turmoil not wanting to retaliate to the cutting comments and brutal attacks levelled his way by former friend and champion Feelgood. As time went by however, Bubblegum eventually unloaded on Feelgood but this will be the first time the two have ever come face to face in a one on one match. And to make things just a little more interesting... it's for the GPW Heavyweight Title. Can the fairytale championship reign continue for Bubblegum, or can Dirk shatter his dreams and become the first ever 2 time Heavyweight Champ?

Tag Team Special, Skeletor vs. Stella

Lethal Dose vs. Voodoo & "Sober" Mike Holmes

Alan Alan Alan Tasker's henchmen, Lethal Dose march into battle against former stable member Mike Holmes and the man they hold responsible for Holmes' new found sobriety - Voodoo. Cyanide and Toxic hope to tempt Holmes back over to the stable that two months ago he turned his back on. They want to snap him out of the spell they accuse Voodoo of putting him under. However, Holmes seems very happy with his new outlook on life and he and Voodoo look to send Lethal Dose packing in this tag team special. Lethal Dose have warned they will not be coming to the ring alone though, with them along with their attorney and law - Alan Alan Alan Tasker will be a 12 pack of Stella. Hoping the case of beer will prove to be a bigger demon to Holmes than the tag team itself. To fend off the 12 pack, Holmes and Voodoo will have Vooodoo's trusty skull, Skeletor in their corner. An unpredictable tag team match. Can MIke Holmes stay sober? Will Voodoo's spells work? Or will Lethal Dose deliver a beating big enough to break Voodoo's spell?

GPW British Title Match

Jak Dominotrescu vs. "Super" Sam Bailey

After pinning the British Champion last month in a tag team match, WKD's "Super" Sam Bailey has earned himself a title shot at GPW: "Christmas Crunch". Bailey, already a former tag team champion looks to add to his growing reputation by capturing his first ever singles gold in GPW. While reigning champion, Romanian Jak Domitrescu along with his cohorts - The Eastern Bloc look to make life as difficult as possible for the energetic live wire. Domitrescu has held onto the title since April this year with help from his fellow countrymen, but are his days numbered as champ? He surely wont be alone in this title outing and will have the Eastern Bloc close by, but can "Super" Sam Bailey overcome the odds to win his first singles gold in GPW?

And, the main event for the evening is...

GPW Tag Team Title 2/3 Falls Match

MIl-Anfield Connection © vs. Young Offenders

The heat just got turned up in this feud. The re-united Young Offenders have the most established tag team in GPW - The Mil-Anfield Connection firmly in their sights and not to mention the tag team trophy. These two teams met in September this year where there was no clear winner decided after the match ended in a draw. There will be NO excuses this time to not find a winner. This, for the first time in our history will be a 2/3 Falls Match for the tag team titles. A winner HAS to be decided, but who will it be? A truley epic encounter is in our midst as Jiggy Walker & "The Model" Danny Hope try to cling onto the championship that has defined them as a team and "Dangerous" Damon Leigh & Joey Hayes, The Young Offenders chase the title that one of the most popular tag teams in Europe have never held. Can the re-united friends overcome the well established unit that is The Mil-Anfield Connection? Or can the well oiled duo of the Mil-Anfield do what they've been doing all year and win again?

GPW British Title No.1 Contenders Match

Harry Doogle vs. Juice vs. Dylan Roberts vs. Chris Echo

After an eye catchingly good year from rookie Dylan Roberts, he has been included in this battle to earn a shot at the British Title. With a burning desire to win and the fans firmly behind him, Roberts could well mark his arrival onto the main roster by becoming the No.1 Contender and going for gold here. However, his opponents wont give him an easy ride. In a wonderful CC-08 tournament, no one impressed more than WKD's Chris Echo. Echo reached the CC-08 finals with two broken wrists and proved he is ready to take a step up. His previous attempts for British gold have been thwarted by the foreign legion numbers of the Eastern Bloc, is he ready to prove again that he is worthy of being No.1 Contender and finally lift the British title? Juice, the current CC8 champion has been as impressive as ever in singles competition this year, but can he compete in this match with 3 others all vying to be No.1 Contender? Also replacing Jervis Cottonbelly due to injury is Harry Doogle as a last minute entry could one half of the next gen score the upset win? , but with so many possible outcomes who will leave with the plaudits and go on to challenge for the British Title next year?

Lumberjack Match

Si Valour vs. Heresy

A violent and personal feud that has lasted all year long finally comes to a head in what promises to be a violent Lumberjack Match. Ever since brutalising Valour and cutting off all his hair, Heresy has, in some form or other dodged the challenge of Valour. Heresy claimed not to have lost his bottle or be running scared of the 2007 Break Out Star, yet during their Bull Rope clash at GPW: "V" where the two were tied to one another, Heresy still managed to find a way of escaping and creating distance between him and Valour. This time, in a special Lumberjack Match, no matter where either man go - there will be no escape. All lumberjacks will be at the ready to ensure neither man can escape the others clutches and a clear winner, one way or the other will HAVE to be decided. There will be nowhere to run to and nowhere to hide, no matter where they look. Heresy has been one step ahead of Valour all year, is this where he runs out of excuses, or can the master manipulator manipulate another win?

SNOWFLAKES FALLING SOFTLY TO THE GROUND - CREATE A PEACE ALL AROUND!

1. Catching a Snowflake, 2. When snowflakes fall, 3. inspiration_snowflake, 4. Snowflake_080022, 5. Snowflake, 6. Snowflake 3435, 7. Snowflake..., 8. Hippie snowflake, 9. Snowflake_080020, 10. Snowflake on my Sleeve.... What you are is important - not what you are missing!, 11. Snowflakes on my Garbage Can, 12. SnowFlake, 13. i saw snowflakes yesterday14. Not available15. Not available16. Not available

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

No new photos today so playing with the toys.

Thanks to lynne_b for the title of "When Snowflakes Fall"

Letterpress poster for art exhibition at Chicago Art Department // 2 color, handset metal and wood type on French Muscletone. Measures 6x18"

Texture of a 2 foot long pod from a tree in Mexico (like a locust pod but much bigger), collected in 1968.

1. Amsterdam Combino tram, 2. 1972 Peugeot 204, 3. 1969 Volkswagen Type 23 Kleinbus formerly of the fire department of Kufstein (Austria), 4. 1972 Citroën SM, 5. Dirty Nikes, 6. 1958 Citroën AZ, 7. Leiden's Relief festivities 2008: footwear, 8. Lunch break,

9. Oldtimer day at Ruinerwold: Ladas, 10. 1978 Volvo 245 DL, 11. 1971 Mercedes-Benz 250, 12. Two on a bike, 13. 1952 Fiat 500 Topolino, 14. 1982 Mercedes-Benz 200, 15. Five girls and one bell, 16. 1979 Mercedes-Benz 300 D Americano,

17. Mercedes-Benz W123 coupe, 18. Snow and ice today: Bike waiting to be defrosted by the sun, 19. Hoar-frost in Leiden, 20. Nr. 94 Bus to Oxford Circus, 21. A night in Amsterdam: Herengracht (Gentlemen's Canal), 22. A night in Amsterdam: 1976 Lancia Fulvia Sport 1.3S, 23. 1977 Citroën SM, 24. Volvo 245,

25. 1972 Rover 3.5 litre Coupe, 26. Oldtimer day in Ruinerwold (NL): 1975 Peugeot 504 Familiale, 27. White Cat Battery, 28. Boot of a Policeman on horseback, 29. Holiday day 3: Italian police car, 30. Holiday day one: Vmax of my Mercedes-Benz 200 D, 31. Whisky tasting, 32. It is spring: builders are getting their tops off,

33. 1972 Volvo 145 S, 34. 1990 Volvo 740 GL hearse, 35. One year of digital photography: 1977 Alpine-Renault A 310 V6, 36. Steel works Corus in IJmuiden (NL), 37. Oldtimer day in Emmen: Mercs, 38. 1959 Simca Aronde P60 Elysee, 39. Self portrait with boy, 40. I discovered a small collection of old French cars: 1960 Citroën AZU & 1968 Citroën Ami 6,

41. Visiting the Mercedes-Benz Museum: 1985 Mercedes-Benz 300TD (W123), 42. Visiting the Mercedes-Benz Museum: 1955 Mercedes-Benz high-speed racing car transporter with MB 300 SLR, 43. 1952 Cadillac, 44. 1947 Dodge Coronet Sun, 45. 1978 Peugeot 604 V6 TI-A32, 46. National Oldtimer Day in Holland: 1936 Peugeot 402 Limousine, 47. Heavy vehicles at the National Oldtimerday: 1970 Barkas B1000, 48. Heavy vehicles at the National Oldtimerday: 1957 Phänomen Garant,

49. National Oldtimer Day in the Netherlands: 1983 Citroën Dyane 6, 50. 1960 Borgward Isabella Combi, 51. Modern parking, 52. 1948 GMC Truck Panel Van, 53. SmålandsBussen, 54. The mad W123 spotter strikes again: 1982 Mercedes-Benz 240 TD, 55. 1977 Volvo 66 GL, 56. 1965 Volvo P 210,

57. TGV train Thalys with Fortis Bank advertisement at Amsterdam Central Station, 58. 1964 Opel Kadett, 59. 1965 Renault Dauphine Export 1094, 60. 1971 Citroën SM, 61. Rolls Royce, 62. GAZ M20 Pobeda | ГАЗ-М20 Победа

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.